I had seen this band before as a support act and thoroughly enjoyed them (see the review of Fire Fire I wrote some time ago), so I was keen to catch them as a headliner.

If you were to take a cursory glance at the gig history of the band known as Clavians you would probably get a couple of impressions.

1. This band has played an impressive amount of shows in just about every cool live music venue around Melbourne.

2. They have played with the cream of Melbourne's underground rock acts on numerous occasions. In fact if you follow that particular scene, you would have been able to spot members of a number of bands kicking round at this particular show, as well as a heap of punters.

Courtesy of having to work late on this particular Friday I showed up fashionably late for this show, in fact just in time to see the two lads from Clavians setting up their gear. The reasonably sized venue was packed to the rafters, and since I hadn't been there in time to catch any of the support acts I was unable to ascertain whether or not the supports were responsible for a large chunk of the crowd or not. From the second Clavians took to the stage and the crowd began cheering, it appeared that basically everyone was there to catch them in action.

The band defines their sound as Scuzzy, which is lucky for me because I have been having trouble trying to define it myself. My take would be that their sound varied from Garage, Post Punk, Lo-Fi Rock, Blues, it had a little bit of everything thrown together to create a unique [Scuzzy] sound, that was surprisingly powerful considering that there are only two people in this band. Aiding in the sound I'm sure was the massive amount of pedals that the frontman/guitarist boasted, as well as a foot piano/keyboard type instrument, which he was able to play whilst singing and playing guitar at the same time, in what was a fine display of multitasking if ever I have seen one. From the first song the energy levels were high and stayed that way, with the two members of the band playing off each other, as well as the crowd. The drummer beat on the drums like they owed him money, and the singer/guitarist was back and forth across the stage any time he didn't need to hit a guitar pedal. As I'm a sucker for a song that goes through a few changes in it's 4-5 minutes, the song Puppeteers was my personal favourite, and appeared to be a favourite of a few others in the crowd too. That being said, most of the band's songs seemed to start one way, and morph into something completely different by the end, taking you for a ride along the way.

The thing that has lasted with me since the show, has been the fact that the two members of Clavians appeared to be truly touched by both the huge attendance at the show, and the rousing response they got from the moment they took the stage until a good 5 minutes after they finished. 2 buddies, playing great music (and clearly having a great time doing it), and being truly humbled by the level of appreciation being shown by the crowd, this was for mine the most endearing part about this band.

Whether or not you're into the few genres I threw into the mix above, if you're into music period you would more than like enjoy this band. Regretably I cannot think of a way to describe this band's sound that will do it the justice it deserves, suffice to say there aren't many (if any) other bands around Melbourne that sound like them. My other regret, forgetting to pick myself up an EP.