Articles

Lyndon Blue

PHILADELPHIA GRAND JURY @ THE ROSEMOUNT HOTEL, SATURDAY APRIL 24

April 28

Sometimes you enter a gig knowing almost exactly what you’re going to think when you depart. There are concerts when you can nigh on guess the content of the post-show repartée before a note is even played, so well acquainted are you with an act’s style and live performance reputation. And then there are those other times when you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, like a raccoon who’s agreed to play a game of Scrabble. Saturday night sat in the Raccoony-Scrabulous category: I’d absorbed enough of the hype in my periphery to know Philadelphia Grand Jury were two (or three) guys who played rock music, I knew they had beards. This was about the extent of my preconception. The rest was a mystery waiting to unfurl before my very ears. Would the ‘Philly Jays’ deliver the goods? The answer lay within the hallowed walls of the Rosemount Hotel.

Before this curiosity was to be sated, two bands of local origin were to do their proverbial thing, tour buddies the John Steel Singers being absent from the journey’s Western seaboard leg. The night began, the dark space buzzing with bodies; the walls dissolved and I found myself on a road, the road of rock music. And there, smack bang in the middle, were THE SCOTCH OF SAINT JAMES. Pseudo-masculine stomp-rock wrapped in a beige tortilla of radio-friendly hooks. The Scotch, it seems, are a textbook example of a band who’s got everything absolutely spot on, from promotion to image to technique – everything, that is, except the creation of inspired and interesting music. Songs specifically crafted to sound infectious and fun end up sounding contrived; riffs perhaps designed to evoke a certain atmosphere of badassery seem instead to rekindle a now irrelevant school of phallic rock. Forgive me Saint James, you canonized spirit-guzzler, whoever you are – I don’t enjoy speaking ill of local acts who appear to have their hearts in the right places, but I also don’t enjoy listening to generic oatmeal rock that at best does an okay job of emulating decent 1990s stoner sounds.

Never so much oatmeal as a chunky, bubbling alphabet soup, POND drizzled onto stage one by one, the members grinning and appearing unhurried despite the restlessly bustling capacity crowd (“A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.”) With the addition of Kevin Parker (Tame Impala, Mink Mussel Creek) on drums, the once amorphous lineup seems to have solidified, giving their performance a fresh sense of order and crispness. And while this deprives the POND set of some of its former shambolic space-tumble jam qualities, it seems apt for where the band’s songs are heading – increasingly towards the realm of tight, soaring, synth-splashed funk pop. The Floyd-esque, blissed-out ‘Torn Asunder’ climbs a delicate piano scale before a plodding folky chorus; meanwhile the set’s heavier moments give Jay ‘Gumby’ Watson a chance to flaunt his fiendish lead guitar chops. A largely synth-based, digital sounding song towards the set’s end was peculiarly akin to some kind of ambient electro hit from the ‘90s but still sat comfortably within the POND sound – a testament to their versatility. The grooviest thing about the POND experience is the mirth with which these five rapscallions deliver their craft; though a special mention must go to the photo of a wheel of Jarlsberg that was perched on stage throughout, prompting bassist Joe Ryan to cry ‘all hail the cheese!’ as the Pondsters disappeared through the back door.

Star wipe: A bespectacled man named Simon Berkfinger sits indifferently on a Sydney street, six strings in hand, clanging out a slew of songs to no-one in particular. All of a sudden, in the corner of his eye, Berkfinger spots an unmistakable man-whisker: it is that of his one-time amigo MC Bad Genius, and he’s carrying half the contents of a kitchen. Bad Genius slides in next to Berkfinger and begins abusing pots and pans in a rhythmic fashion. And before you can say “largely inaccurate account of events,” the pair have formed a band. They name it after a Fiery Furnaces song, Bad Genius swaps to bass and, after cycling through a roster of drummers, they settle on a 54 year-old groover from Michigan who used to play with Earth, Wind & Fire (!) amongst others. Having recorded a hit album (entitled ‘Hope is For Hopers’) on a punkishly meager budget, the now-trio embark on a wide-sweeping quest for general raucousness. Tonight, that quest finds them at the Rosie, where their onstage banter is delivered by a crazed, high-pitched voice on a tape they’d prepared earlier. ‘WE’RE PHILADELPHIA GRAND JURY, AND THIS IS MY FAVOURITE SONG!’ It shrieks. The bearded threesome launch into a frantic pop onslaught: each track catchier and more energetic than the last. The “indie-punk-soul” explosion is amusingly offset against cynical, ironic or just plain silly lyrics – see ‘Then it hits me / that no-one’s in love with me’ (Going To The Casino), ‘I don’t want to party’ (the decidedly celebratory I Don’t Want To Party Party) or ‘There’s a catch / I’m going to kill you’ (I’m Going To Kill You). It’s a remarkably intoxicating cocktail: a mixture of proto-punk and early rock ‘n’ roll zest (that ‘Going To The Casino’ opens with a notably Sonics-esque scream is no coincidence) and Ben Folds-ish middle-class, self-deprecating geekiness. It’s a cocktail that, in combination with their DIY ethos and slightly strange stage presence, ought to see them likened to Eddy Current Suppression Ring – but the Philly Jay’s more overt embracement of mainstream institutions like Triple J and the TV show Underbelly will probably keep such comparisons at bay.

The demented disembodied voice continues to announce every song as either ‘the best song’ or ‘my favourite song’ – and why not, for they’re all spectacular candidates. The trio close on a feedback laden version of ‘I Don’t Want To Party,’ then, sweaty but undefeated, return to dish out an encore: Berkfinger walks into the middle of the crowd with his microphone, is swamped with vivacious fans, and hurtles into the group’s noted rendition of Jay-Z’s ‘99 Problems.’ It’s a suitably weird and wonderful way to end a set that was, from the get-go, a motherload of unbridled fun. I blew in with no expectations; I left still not quite sure of what I’d seen. But, one way or another – it rocked, rolled and flipping ruled.