Mouse Mice Moose Meese

I drove back from Melbourne on Thursday.  One hit.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.  At least one hopes that no one will be collecting $200... Overtaking semi-trailers on hills becomes so addictive after a while that it becomes all too easy to forget about those pesky 'radar used in this area' signs.

Anyhoo, I dragged my sorry ass through the door to find a cheery Irishman in my kitchen.  What's that, a gig at the Annandale?  Garage rock is just what I need!  And so after showering away three days worth of grease and travel dust and resuming my regular odour, off we plunged.

There's been murmurings of late about the continued viability of the Annandale - the lawyers seem to be growing fat off the stream of noise complaints that persistently flow down Nelson St.  It wouldn't be hugely surprising if it went the way of the Hopetoun sometime in the near future, which would make it the largest scalp to be claimed by the city's culturally inflexible residents.  Ten years time:  Sorry?  Live music?  And what might that be?

Not that such concerns seem to be bothering the management of course who are pushing ahead with another round of hefty renovations that look set to open out the venue considerably, through the addition of a new entrance on Parramatta Rd and an expansion of the outdoor seating area out the back.  All to the good.

In the meantime though it's the same dense, occasionally claustrophobic hellhole*, and so perfectly suited to a civilised evening of garage rock.  Touring Texans Thee Oh Sees revved things up suitably with a noise injection somewhat in the vein of the Black Lips.  Although nowhere near as experimental as fellow-lone-star-staters White Denim or even the joyfully slap-dash Times New Viking, the OCs generated some solid energy, only dissipating somewhat towards the end with some proggy inflections that began to outstay their welcome.

After some entertaining shadow puppetry on the requisite pull-down cinema screen from the folks up the front - silhouettes of various well-loved farm animals such as ducks, dogs and cows were popular as well as of course the Bill Clinton - Melbournites the Eddy Current Suppression Ring got stuck into it.  Unlike approximately 90% of the crowd I hadn't had the pleasure before and so was gratified to find that, despite some pretty dreadful decisions being made on the mixing desk, they kick some serious buttock.

The main draw card of course is former vinyl factory work experience boy Brendan Suppression's convulsive vocals.  He's mad as a cut snake but then so was the entire front of the crowd - it's been a while since I've seen actual crowd surfing**.  Suppression worked past the aforementioned issues with the vocal mix however, maintaining an intense rapport with part time Dave Hughes impersonator Eddy Current, the pair of them winding each other up to ever more spastic eruptions.

Or at least I thought so, being subsequently told that compared to previous gigs the band seemed to be running on about three-quarter capacity.  Perhaps it was just the niggling sound issues - it was certainly bloody difficult to make out what Suppression was babbling about half the time, particularly the semi-spoken word declamations delivered from atop the bar - but the band did seem to be having some difficulty in busting things up a notch.  Who knows.  Perhaps they traveled from the garden state on the blacktop.




Random things to pass the time:  Latest pitchfork rubber stamped uber-group;  Sufjan Stevens musing on the existential absurdity of doing anything let alone making music.  Heh;  Ali Smith's The Accidental - I love books that force you to have an opinion.


* I have yet to see a bathroom more disgusting than the men's room at the Annandale, and that includes the dungeon beneath the biker bar off Tottenham Court Road in London where I could almost *see* the hepatitis dripping off the walls.

** I particularly liked the girl who pulled off her shoe whilst in midair and promptly began beating the bloke beneath her with it who had apparently stuck his finger where he shouldn't.