The Peep Tempel @ Newtown Social Club

A packed house of all kinds filed into Newtown Social Club for a healthy dose of ’70s-style Oz punk, courtesy of The Peep Tempel. A few months have passed since the great album Tales was released, and Saturday’s gig was a chance for the band to get the warm reception the makers of that album deserve.

Opening the show were White Dog, a fairly nascent group playing fairly standard hardcore. But like most good hardcore, the set was life-affirming, and they incorporated enough interesting elements (in particular the noise-inspired guitar lines) to show promise.

Following them were Canberra’s Super Best Friends. Kindred spirits with The Smith Street Band, they trade in fast-paced low-end rock that recalls mid-’90s triple j, particularly Frenzal Rhomb and Jebediah. At the tail end of their tour for debut album Status Updates, the tight-knit three-piece delivered songs with pointed slacker social commentary and catchy melodies sung in proud Australian accents that weave their way into your brain. Their set was nothing but a winner.

As expected, The Peep Tempel thankfully present a no-pretence, no-bullshit approach to their live show. Just vocals, guitar, bass, drums, a bunch of energy and an intention to blow through as many songs as possible. An early broken string, the kind of thing that normally derails the momentum of a punk gig, turned into an early set highlight when bassist Stewart Rayner and drummer Steven Carter locked into a punk groove while frontman Blake Scott ranted and raved into the mic while he changed the string. Quite an achievement.

Put it down to the music they play recalling Radio Birdman and The Saints, or the fact that the average age of the band must be something close to 40, but The Peep Tempel attract a much older audience than the average band on their second album. Thanks to the glorious ‘Carol’ becoming a hit on triple j, they attract a ton of rowdy drunks in their early 20s too. Which leads to the singular joy of witnessing blokes in their mid-50s slam dancing along with the youth, who were set on crowd-surfing the entire time.

‘Big Fish’, ‘Dark Beach’ and the aforementioned ‘Carol’ were the highlights of the set, falling right in the sweet spot between fun and menacing. But judging from the crowd’s reaction, the band could have played whatever it wanted and it would have been greeted with cheers.

At the end of the gig, after The Peep Tempel had given the crowd all they had and Scott had given crowd-surfing a go himself, the crowd begged and received that rarest of events in modern gig culture; a legitimate encore, which before it was an expected custom used to be the mark of a well received gig. It absolutely was here.