Reviewed on Saturday July 20

Here’s BRAG’s verdict – At First Sight should happen pretty much every weekend. Carriageworks is a fantastic venue for live music – the largest performance space turned out to have great acoustics and more than enough room for every ticket holder to get a comfortable space in the dark.Good lighting, good sound, and interesting Australian bands playing bite-sized sets – plus $5 beers (while they lasted), food and the Eveleigh Farmers Market (replete with Breakfast Port) before hand, and of course thousands upon thousands of new and second hand records to sift through.

Carriageworks’ massive industrial hall filled up early in the day with record hunters both obsessive and casual – many came early to plunder the crates but didn’t bother to stay and pay for the bands. Which was a shame, as for a reasonable $35 ticket they could have caught 11 ace Australian bands (less than $3.20 a band).

Personal highlights were Beaches, whose massive icy wall of doom-like psych guitar noise earned them rapturous applause, despite ear-piercing feedback issues that caused one band member to have to pack it in and leave the stage before the last song. Super Wild Horses were in fine form, rollicking through their instrument-switching set of 60s garage-pop, while Songs delivered one of the day’s most polished sets of C86 guitar pop. Meanwhile, Straight Arrows’ full frontal assault of raw, brattish, shouty garage punk would have been perfect for a circle pit, if it hadn’t been about two in the afternoon.

After ten hours, we’d drunk plenty of cheap beer, seen some great bands, and picked up a stack of $5 records – more please.

BY NICK JARVIS

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