Saturday, February 28, 2009

Black Mountain (27/2/2009)

The corner hotel is one of the big guns on the Melbourne live music scene... even though the venue isn't particularly grand. As a pub, big thumbs up, but venue... meh. There's a big ass friggin pole dead set in the middle of the dancefloor in front of the stage. And the air con was on mighty high and it was chilly. But the quality of tunes more than makes up for it 90 percent of the time.

Kind of sounded a bit like Neil Young most of the time, with the exception of one Triple-M sounding rock song which I wasn't really into. One song I noticed in particular was 'Wishing Well'.... long sprawly guitar song... it was fun. Definitely set the mood for what was to come. Very cool.

You know how most prog-rock songs have slow bits and fast bits, quiet bits and loud bits etc. (pretty much the elements that define them as prog rock), well Lady Strangelove are a prog-rock band without the slow bits. From the first beat to the last it sounds like the most ridiculous part of a Mars Volta tune.... which is good for the first two songs... but by the end of the set I was getting a little... not tired, but weary... of the non-stop rockin. They sound a lot like Wolf and Cub, but with a lot more practice (see previous Wolf and Cub review)... can't really complain about them, if I had of heard one song they'd have been amazing, but a whole set is almost too much of a good thing.

What better way to cap off the amazing Feburary of gigs, with Black Mountain. I swear, no shit, my hairs on the back of my neck stood up about 8 times... and it wasn't just the air conditioning. The songs are fantastically written, the band can perform stunningly without an ego in sight, and a 16 minute encore is just what a band needs to do to get me to use the words amazing, stunning and fantastically. 'Angels' is a future classic, 'Don't Run our Hearts around' was stupid fun, and the moment where the chick belts out that one line in 'Tyrants'... wow. It's a feeling even better than finding out you were still intact after you had thought you'd been castrated by a sociapathic teenager, but they only used a bulldog clip and some ice (I just watched Hard Candy... didn't actually happen to me). I love Black Mountain.

Shit review I know, but I can't put it into words... it a whole lot easier to write about something that is horridly bad than stupendously good.

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