The Taco van in full swing by the time I arrived at the Tote on Friday
to see Seagull nudge their second album The Council Tree out of the nest. I
may have been a little disconcerted after navigating the huddled masses in
front of the fire, but there was a patch of non-sticky carpet back there
somewhere that had my name on it.

First up
was Yffer (rhymes with ‘differ’), comprised of Georgia Harvey and Travis John,
both on guitar. What ensued was a set of whimsical but terse, minimalist
shoegaze-pop. Yffer are what I imagine would happen if Laura Jean accidentally
swallowed an early Kaki King record. John’s chime-like guitar lines are a floating
dock for Harvey’s soft vocals, and the two fit together like cup and saucer. It
was a fairly hushed performance but with more gigs under their belt you can bet
they’ll take the whimsical-but-terse-minimalist-shoegaze-pop scene by storm.

Bearhug had come from Sydney that day, and despite the woeful response from the crowd they put in a pretty solid set. I heard welcome splashes of
Wilco, Panda Bear, XTC (especially on "Grapefruit"), and the diffused, backseat
vocals of Thurston Moore every now and then, and a pleasing amount of cowbell. Bearhug are predominantly a guitar band though, and rightly so. Chunky and visceral one
minute, dripping and sweet the next, they layer instruments in the
grand tradition of bands like Cinematic Orchestra, Boards of Canada or Foals. Despite some
stilted transitions in the set and the mostly uninterested audience, Bearhug sound promising and in the moments when they hit a stride, it was all sparks.

Seagull
took the stage amid endlessly drifting data projections of nebulae and the
reserved chatter of the audience as people settled in front of the stage. Shuffling
into place as the room quietened, singer and chief songwriter Chris Bolton
assumed his default expression for the evening: gazing wistfully (or
stubbornly, still not sure which) at the cross beams in the ceiling.

His voice
recalls the late Mark Linkous, a raspier Thom Yorke, Bonnie Prince Billy even.
It is dry and brittle, stretched as though to break. But the lyrics, and the
instrumentation…they were like Irish folk tales re-imagined by the Velvet
Underground, or Sonic Youth channelling Australian outlaws, or Grandaddy being
dragged through a mangrove at dawn. The first song ‘Grandmother’ was solemn,
and repetitive like a post-traumatic mantra, not to mention an incredibly disturbing
way to start the show.

He had some
fun too, don’t get me wrong. At one stage he broke into a few seconds of
Radiohead’s "I Might Be Wrong", poking fun at the comparisons people have made
about The Council Tree. Apart from that there was little comedic
relief, and it didn’t take long before the creeping sense of despair
started to affect my youthful exuberance. Great songs though.
Jolly good show.<