Live Review: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, The Red Paintings, Sincerely Grizzly

This review is in reverse chronological order. theMusic.com.au readers are clearly sophisticated enough to deal with this radical break from review tradition and, besides, there's good reason for it. You'll see at the end.

So, the night ended with ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's first Adelaide show in 13 years. That's a helluva long time between trips and enough of a wait to ensure a boisterous and expectant crowd at Jive even on a rainy, freezing Tuesday night. It was night one of the tour and it showed some. Frontman Conrad Keely's throat struggled early on, and technical gremlins threatened the band's forward inertia. But this latest manifestation of ...Trail Of Dead (the line-up has a history of morphing) suddenly hit its strides about 20 minutes in. The scotch and tequila passed around stage probably helped. ...Trail Of Dead play pummelling post-DC indie rock'n'roll — all black clothes, Gibson guitars and screamy choruses. Imagine Fugazi covering Rush and you're close. The crowd lapped up everything from an extensive back catalogue, but were most appreciative of Caterwaul from 2005's Worlds Apart. The atmosphere turned more party with each song, culminating in bassist Autry Fulbright II leaping onto and into the crowd several times. 

But if there was just the faintest whiff of pretension in some of ...Trail Of Dead's proggier tendencies, tour support The Red Paintings positively reeked. The fish stinks from the head, as the saying goes, and this fish's name is (appropriately) Trash. He's the conceptualist behind art-rock-thingo The Red Paintings, a band in which songcraft plays second fiddle (literally) to elaborate costumes, props, pre-recorded spooky ambience and an anonymous human canvas wearing a large papier-mache headpiece, on whom the audience are invited to paint. Look, it's not inherently bad. The rhythm section impressed in that slightly silly power-metal way and violinist Alix Col is obviously accomplished. Trash McSweeney must be doing something right because he continues to land plum gigs worldwide, but whatever that thing is precisely escapes this scribe. Who thinks Fuck The System is a good name for a song, besides a cranky teenager with dyed black hair? And how can you take seriously a man who, straight-faced, records an orchestral art-metal cover of Midnight Oil's Beds Are Burning and rewrites the refrain as "whales are dying"? The whole performance is like some ill-advised Circus-Oz/Paramore collaboration fronted by a character Chris Lilley retired for being too ludicrous. 

Which brings us to local openers, Sincerely, Grizzly, which is basically a baby ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. Five years ago, guitarist/singer Josh Calligeros wrote to Conrad Keely, the singer in his favourite band ever. Calligeros had started a band too. Keely heard Calligeros' music and invited his band to open for ...Trail Of Dead in Melbourne. So now they're rock family. Before tonight's show, they'd been jamming on an acoustic at Calligeros' flat and, during tonight's encore, Keely pulled Calligeros (and his adorably fanboyish mate Matt Vesely) onstage to help sing an oldie. Everyone in ...Trail Of Dead had huge grins on their faces. That's how you know this is a fucking cool band.