Reviewed on Thursday June 5
By the time you read this, Sydney trio Bloods will have finished work on their debut album. The early arrivals to the Factory’s downstairs room were lucky enough to get a sneak preview of what’s to come, and were all the better for it. The band leans on the brisk and brattish side of garage rock, all girl-meets-boy giddiness and teenage kicks. It threatens to fall apart at the seams at any given moment – especially when bassist Sweetie Zamora can’t remember how to play the bassline on current single ‘Want It’. Rather than serve as a detriment, however, it adds a laconic charm to proceedings.
“Everything feels like it’s slanted on one side,” mused Ali Koehler hazily some two songs into her set. The former Best Coast drummer’s new project, Upset, made their Australian debut this evening, albeit on admittedly shaky foundations. With jetlag dragging the band down, flubs and forgetfulness were inevitable – at one point, drummer Patty Schemel even had to ask her bandmates how a song started. Regardless, the band was in good spirits, and once they got on the proverbial right foot, the rest of the set felt effortless. It’s also worth mentioning that Upset only used 31 minutes of their allocated 45 – ensuring that every moment they played counted.
A screech of guitar, a flurry of drums, a rumble of bass, a roar from the microphone – so began the first-ever set from Vancouver’s White Lung in Australia. Similar to Upset, the acerbic post-punks wasted precious little time onstage, tearing through a dozen songs in just over half an hour. The strain of the flight hadn’t quite hit the band as badly as its predecessors, allowing for the tightest set overall. Older favourites struck a chord with the front-row devotees, while tracks from their forthcoming Deep Fantasy showed a great deal of promise and a bold step forward for the band. A small turnout could have easily kept morale down and plagued the evening, but each band’s efforts made a very fun evening out of the miserable rain.
