Big Scary - Vacation

Since coming to the rather sensible realisation that playing in a band is preferable by far to dealing with things like jobs or rent, Melbournians Tom Iansek and Jo Syme have been quick to get on with it: half a dozen EPs, including the themed ‘Seasons’ releases, supporting tours with acts like The Vasco Era and Midlake, as well as numerous solo shows. With their debut long-player, the pair have assembled a solid collection that sums up their work to date without quite hitting the electric rawness of their EPs.

Loosely unified around the thought that Big Scary are on a holiday from the ‘real world’, Vacation is rife with images of uncertainty. “I can quote my favourite line / I can calculate the distance in sine” Iansek declares on second single ‘Gladiator’, before recognising his inability to effect events: “it makes no difference anyway”. Though some of the material here seems a touch adolescent, Iansek is able to inject a whole universe of frustrated vigour into a line like “I’m just bored / I don’t know what to do with my life” (the piano-powered ‘Mix-Tape’) with a throaty yowl that is completely convincing.

Though the genre-tripping for which the pair quickly became known is less flambouyantly displayed here, Iansek’s writing retains all its versatility; the stripped down blues of ‘Purple’ is followed by the synth-blurred ‘Child In A Tree’ and the contemplative downer ‘Bad Friends’, in which Iansek’s beautiful upper register lends “my friends are all getting drunk somewhere without me” a genuine poignancy. But the highlight is a re-recording of ‘Falling Away’ from the Autumn EP, which casts a small shadow across the rest of the record.

Impressive as much for the wide-ranging breadth of Iansek’s songwriting as the clear-eyed certainty of the pair’s performance, Vacation is a promising debut LP.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 432, October 3rd 2011

Midlake, Big Scary @ The Metro Theatre, July 31

Kudos to Melbourne duo Big Scary (or the management thereof) for landing the support slot tonight. With their breadcrumb trail of EPs having yet to lead to an album, opening for a Major American Rock Group is no small feat. They certainly deserve the exposure, the pair providing a toothsome showcase of their gentler side – the downside being that Tom Iansek’s sweetly warbling tenor was often overwhelmed by the friendly babble of a restive crowd. While this was mostly the sound guy’s fault, some material seemed a touch tentative, a concern that certainly didn’t apply to an innervating rendition of ‘Autumn’.

Midlake raised eyebrows with their third album The Courage Of Others, songwriter and scraggly troubadour Tim Smith’s fixation on the likes of Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull giving rise to an exercise in ’70s English folk revivalism with a peculiarly American flavour. The turn of the century log cabin shtick of the band’s breakthrough Van Occupanther gave way to ancient woods, fair maids and a deep and abiding melancholy. And such was the tone this evening, Smith performing much of the set comfortably seated whilst intoning lines such as “I will never have the courage of others” with an appropriate amount of gravitas.

Not that this was a downer in any way; the Texan septet generate a magnetic atmosphere with a decidedly old-school air (aided and abetted by the odd whiff of weed and the high ratio of grey hair scattered through the audience), while building some utterly electrifying climaxes (‘Core of Nature’ as a case in point). But while it’s difficult not admire the conviction and stature that Smith & Co. bring to their newer material, the VO favourites ‘Bandits’ and ‘Branches’ with which they chose to encore were like a ray of sunshine on the woodlands after rain.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 374, August 9th 2010