Parading
Ciggy
Witch
The Icypoles
The
Gasometer Hotel
Tuesday 10
May 2016
$10
The Other Keef
 |
| Parading - in 'shoegaze' mode. That's Keef far right. |
Their other unique selling point is guitarist Keith Mason.
As I watched the band setting up at the Gasometer Hotel on Tuesday night, he
looked like an unassuming sort of chap. The other band members each exhibited one
or two hallmarks of your traditional rock ‘n’ roller: the bass player sported
rockabilly side burns, tight jeans and a leather jacket, the lead singer/guitarist
had a black and white horizontal striped t-shirt, loose black jacket, unkempt black
hair and ‘tude, and the drummer wore flared tan slacks teamed with a chocolate
brown leather suit coat – more 70s porn pastiche than rock really, but unusual
enough to qualify as counter culture couture. Mason meanwhile had tidy ginger
hair and wore neat blue denim jeans turned up slightly at the ankle with a grey
light knit crew neck jumper. He looked more like an accountant on casual Friday
than a firebrand axeman, but as they say at most orgies worthy of the name, watch the quiet ones.
I was at the Gasometer Hotel for the first of a
four-week Tuesday residency featuring acts from the Lost & Lonesome Record
label. Fittingly perhaps, given the label name, I was there by myself. I’d been
all set to catch Parading play at The Tote a couple of weeks previous, but as
the downpour that had persisted all day continued into the evening, the idea of
driving across town grew less and less attractive. I’m at an age where I look
for reasons not to go out, rather than the opposite, so I thought I’d just take
a rain check – literally – and wait for another opportunity to catch them.
This was another cold night, but at least it wasn’t
raining and the drive there and back was a good chance for some alone time with
the new Radiohead album that had just come out.
Ciggy
Witch
I missed the first act, The Icypoles, but caught Ciggy
Witch as they were starting their set. I took up a spot in the shadows at the
back where the bulk of the small audience was loosely gathered. Despite there
being several metres of empty space between me and the stage, a group of three
people wandered in and stationed themselves right in front of me; so close that
the brim of my trilby was actually touching the back of one guy’s head. Fine if
we were in a packed moshpit at the Hilltop Hoods, but this was a largely empty
room for a gentle indie pop band. I don’t know if this was some kind of
passive-aggressive protest against me, or just people with no sense of personal
space. However, rather than make a scene I just moved off to a stool on the side.
I’d never heard of Ciggy Witch, but it’s an evocative
name and I recognised the girl on keyboards as the drummer from Totally Mild.
Musically they were very accomplished with interesting multi-layered jangly
guitar lines and intertwining melodies. There was even a slide guitarist
perched on two upturned milk crates who managed to elicit something more musical
than a country whine from his instrument.
The two guitarists who alternated singing duties offset
this innate musicality with deliberately naïve lyrics and bland vocal delivery. I don't offer this as a criticism - these are distinctive characteristics of the ‘dolewave’ genre, a name that presumably derives from the employment status of the genre’s exponents rather than saying anything in particular
about a shared fashion sensibility or general musical approach. Even so, expressionless vocal delivery does seem to be a thing with a certain type of band - Twerps, Dick Diver etc.
Of course I don’t know for sure that this was a
deliberate stylistic choice for Ciggy Witch. I only assume as much because when the bass player
and Ashley Bundang, the keyboard player, contributed backing vocals, they
injected a greater degree of tone and tunefulness into their singing. It
might simply have been that the guitarists wrote the songs and wanted to sing
them, regardless of the fact that there are others in the band more vocally adept. And fair enough too. In any case, musically they sounded pretty good.
Parading
There was only a small crowd of 40 or so people in the room and this diminished even further once Ciggy Witch finished. Normally the venue gets more crowded for the headline act, not less, but perhaps Ciggy Witch are at a stage in their career when their friends are still willing to venture out on a cold night to see them play. In fact the room was so sparsely populated that the barmaid correctly anticipated my order when I went to procure just my second drink.
Still there were enough of us in the room when
Parading started strumming away at their opening instrumental piece, a dreamy,
meandering drenching of guitar reverb. Lead singer – not that he’d done any of
that to this point – Tom Coleman introduced it as Alexandra Pde, which seemed appropriate given that it was also the
name of the busy thoroughfare that ran past the front door of the venue.
They followed this with a song called Riverside and then their new single, Butterfly, the only Parading song with
which I was familiar going in. It is a dark, thrumming number that resembles
Bowie’s Heroes for a few bars, before
settling into something less grandiose, but nonetheless compelling. The band
was joined on stage for this song and the next by a guest vocalist. Coleman
introduced her in a mumbling slur, so I missed the name, but it was possibly Alana
West, who sings on the single and fronts label stablemates Hideous Towns. Whoever
it was, she took her cue from Coleman and delivered her vocal contribution with
a deadpan expression while staring fixedly into the middle distance.
If Ciggy Witch can be classified as ‘dolewave,’ then Parading
might be said to represent that other evocatively named indie genre, ‘shoegaze,’
a nomenclature that tells you as much about the band’s posture as it does about
their music. And it was true to a degree, the band members generally looked
intently downwards over their instruments as they played. Like forbears My
Bloody Valentine, and Ride, Parading’s sound is dominated by heavily
daubed layers of guitar reverb and a soporific vocal that doesn’t so much ride
on top the music as blend in with the soundscape. Either that or the mix was just a bit muffled.
"More Keith"
Keith is a name already synonymous with great guitarists – along with other equally treasured aspects of rock ‘n’ roll life – and while I can’t speak to the private habits of Parading’s Keith Mason, his playing style was the highlight of the night.
Once strapped on, Mason wrestles with his guitar as
if it is an octopus he is trying to dislodge. He twists and turns as he grasps
the arm of his guitar with one hand, and doesn’t so much strum it as swipe furiously
at it with the other, his forearm swinging on an axis so well-oiled that he threatens
to punch himself in the chin on each upward thrust.
I’m not so conversant with the intricacies of playing
that I could necessarily tell what noise was coming from Coleman’s amp and what
from Keith’s, but where Coleman seemed to be adding the melody line, Mason was
dipping into a palette of feedback and lathering on the noise in ever thicker, more dissonant daubs. It sounded great.
“More Keith” Coleman at one stage asked of the mixer,
a cry which was taken up by a few stray members of the audience, and one with
which I wholeheartedly concurred. ‘More Keith’ indeed.
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