Fremantle Arts Centre
Thursday, April 23, 2015
San Cisco are kind of a big deal. If you didn’t already know it the upgrade of these shows to the South Lawn and the buzz in the air as Methyl Ethyl and Crooked Colours opened proceedings spelt it out in no uncertain terms. With little in the way of fanfare the quartet took to the stage and launched into Golden Revolver. It seemed nice in a new era of music and a few rungs up the ladder of success that they are still cool to open with their first single from 2010 – it says a lot about their confidence.
But new is the news, however, and runs through the Gracetown LP cuts, About You and Bitter Winter found them hitting their straps, with fans clearly regarding the songs as San Cisco staples right now.
With that said, drummer Scarlett Stevens announced the next song as ‘an old song of ours about stalking people’ as she co-sung with the young enigma that is Jordi Davieson on Awkward. Later on Stevens stepped out from behind the drumkit for an ‘Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta moment’, duetting at front of stage for Superslow. It’s a new and different gesture in their show and at times the previous mentioned song’s title sprung to mind, but as a fan moment it’ll soon come up trumps.
This show marked the first with added laptop bells and whistles, injecting the live set with the fuller scope of Gracetown’s soundscape. Instrumental (!) in this process has been bassist, Nick Gardiner, who sat out the band’s recent overseas tour due to an accidental gunshot wound to his foot. ‘Say sorry Nick!’ said Stevens, a sentiment echoed good-naturedly by Davieson, before a shout-out was given to Gunns bass player, Jenn Aslett, who filled in for Gardiner in recent months.
Some jitters had been felt in the camp but a solid week of prep saw that the first ‘digital age’ show for the band went pretty swimmingly with new material such as Too Much Time Together, Snow, RUN and Mistakes sounding a charm. However at the heart of it is a tight band and the always excellent guitar interplay of Davieson and Josh Biondillo. As they sent off the crowd with the pop schtick of Fred Astaire San Cisco was clearly the band for them.
BOB GORDON
