Review: Spacey Jane at Rosemount Hotel
Spacey Jane at Rosemount Hotel
w/ Mitchell J Benson
Tuesday, January 15, 2025
After a quiet fourteen months, Perth indie rockers Spacey Jane made a special hometown reappearance. The announcement on Monday morning for the Tuesday night show sent fans frantically tapping their phones for tickets. Following a great ticket war, five hundred of their fastest-fingered fans were rewarded with servings of new sounds and a much brighter Tuesday than usual.
Following a dose of seventies funk to warm up the P.A., producer and MYTHS member Mitchell J Benson took over on the decks. Initially starting with a light shimmer and funk tunes similar to the music previously, he eventually laid the foundations for a far more haunting and psychedelic mood with a remix of Tame Impala’s Half Full Glass of Wine. As the crowd continued to grow, he returned to those seventies vibes, albeit in more cringe fashion this time with a fun rework of Rod Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy. In all this, Benson showed signs of a deep internal boogie, visibly humming along to certain musical phrases.
In between acts, few if any audience members moved from their precious spots in the crowd; there had simply been too much digital warfare in the day to lose the perfect vantage point just for a between-sets smoke. After the World Series Cricket theme played over the speakers to signify a marvellous evening, the four members of Spacey Jane took to the stage. The group calmly started the set by tuning up, looking like any other band playing the Rosie on a Tuesday, before kicking off with Skin, followed by Lunchtime. The duty of the latter’s emphatic ‘yeah!’ was handled confidently by the audience, bolstering the band’s early set energy.
A sneak peek at the group’s time in hiding came in the form of All The Noise. Singer Caleb Harper shed his Rickenbacker for an intimate moment with his microphone for the song due for release this week. The gentle, floating guitars and a dramatic reverb acting as a fifth member show a slight drifting towards the pop side of their sound—all backed by that classic Spacey Jane beat. The following track, 2018’s Sawtooth, almost seemed like an introduction to some of the group’s ever-growing back catalogue. Feeding the Family brought a more familiar blast from the past, with the crowd joining in on the gargling guitar riff.
A murmur of guitar noise swiftly transitioned into another classic from their original Rosemount days, Thrills. The excitement in playing a much-needed up-tempo track was visible; the band briefly got caught up in a slippery but quickly recovered moment, while even new fans couldn’t resist hopping about playfully. Good for You further added energy lost during the slower middle section; lead guitarist Ashton Hardman-Le Cornu and bassist Peppa Lane chased each other across the stage regularly during the later stages of the set, with the singer getting a turn during an instrumental break.
The more mid-tempo Lots of Nothing, charged up the room with anthemic passion. The audience chant during the chorus quickly turned to calls of ‘encore’ as the band exited the stage without a word. After some mild arm twisting, the four-piece returned with another slice of their impending album, How to Kill House Plants. Caleb Harper’s acoustic guitar combined with electronic chimes in the background showed more signs of added friendliness to their at-times anxiety-tinged lyrics. Finally, Booster Seat wished everyone a safe trip home, and the audience sang along as the lyrics conjured feelings of an emotional Uber ride after a night out.
Following Spacey Jane’s whirlwind rise to international fanfare, the local heroes’ well-earned rest seemed good for both them and their fans. The near-instant sellout and the crowd’s enthusiastic singalongs showed that while Spacey Jane were gone for a little while, they were hardly forgotten.
AJ MAHAR
Photos by Adrian Thomson
