Amidst all the hype of
Splendour weekend, there was a small show with pretty big line up occurring in
the same state! This show happened to the Circle Pit’s final headline show
before leaving our shores to tour “The land of the free”.  In support of Circle Pit on their
farewell show were Naked On The Vague, The Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys and Dominic
Talarico.

Opening the night to a
fairly empty room was
Dominic Talarico
, possibly the black sheep in the fairly
guitar-dominated night. The fact that Talarico produces his own songs and sings over them was
not only a surprise on the night but also kept me hooked. His production was
packed with head-bopping beats, with lyrics that kept you captivated coupling
this with melodies that linger for days. In the pop music industry that is so
full polish, it is good to see him write and produce music that has grit and
allows him to express himself honestly.

The Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys
brought
the noise and a new bass guitar. According to Nic Warnock (bass/vocals/drums) the newly acquired bass previously had a Jamiroquai sticker on it, which was
the sign that it was a good bass guitar.
The band ripped through their set of garage-fused punk
intertwined with their witty humour and quick swigs of their beers between
songs. Between the feedback of guitars the songs make you move, in a good way
that is, with fast-paced drums and bass lines that bumbled along contrasting yet
complementing the distorted guitar. The set seemed to go without a hitch for the
band, Warnock noted with surprise - that was until the sound engineer for
the night called a rather abrupt end to their set after losing track of time.

It was down to the
business end of the night and
Naked On The Vague
brought just that. It wasn’t
the first time I had seen Naked On The Vague but similar to hearing things you
didn’t hear on first listen, you notice things when you see a band a second
time. In particular on this instance was the impact of the less distorted
guitar riffs and how much they stick out from the layer of droning dissonant
organ. The music performed by Naked On The Vague is packed full of energy, not
because they run around on the stage (they don’t) but due to the tension
created between the instruments pushing and pulling away from one another.
“Clock of 12’s” was a highlight in the set, the song which features on a
upcoming film collaboration titled “Twelve Dark Noons”.

On their final
headline show before leaving for an American tour,
Circle Pit pulled out all
the stops for their steadily increasing legion of loyal fans. The band had
their debut 7” repressed with individually hand drawn sleeve artwork and also
for sale a CD-R of new material titled The
Oil Slick Sampler.

The set for the evening had many of the songs from Bruise Constellation including “Speed Limits”, “Strange Blue”, “Wave Machine” and “Another Trick”. Unfortunately the set was plagued with guitar issues, with Angela Bermuda going through three guitars before partner-in-crime Jack Mannix let her use his. Despite the issues you couldn’t fault them for the effort they were putting in and the problems didn’t alter the overall songs too badly.

On behalf of the AU review I would like to wish Circle Pit the best of luck in the USA. and look forward to plenty of new songs upon their return.

[Header photo: Pedro Ramos
www.pedroramos.org]