Live Review: mewithoutYou, Elliot The Bull, Alibrandi, House Of Giants

The faux-smoke-cloaked confines of The Brightside are abuzz with a sizeable early crowd tonight, ostensibly the result of the looming threat of another working week conspiring with undeniable enthusiasm for visiting indie-rock/post-hardcore mainstays mewithoutYou to draw a good number of the city’s punters out from their caves at a more respectable hour than usual.

Evening openers and local product House Of Giants make the most of the voluminous, eager crowd, delivering an especially taut but appropriately malleable array of instrumental rock monoliths, their waves of distortion and cymbal crashes sending an inescapable churn through the audience. The band wordlessly seizes our attention from the outset and refuses to let go until the dying hum of their final notes, in a confident, enjoyable showing that sets the tone for the evening with aplomb.

We’re next treated to the thunderous, emotive style of fellow local concern Alibrandi, whose rough-hewn, raw-edged aesthetic finds them evoking something of an early-Foo-Fighters-meets-Boysetsfire vibe, occasionally teetering too close to the chunk-riddled self-indulgence that traps so many other three-guitar bands as they mistake volume for weight. Nonetheless, they’re an impressive, energetic outfit who clearly love what they do, and they do it well. In fact, both local openers do much to make their home town proud tonight.z

However, when we get to main tour supports and Central Coast natives Elliot The Bull, the visual allure of the many thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment up on stage simply cannot be matched by the relatively limited application to which they are put. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with the group’s set – indeed, it’s perfectly fine, but it’s fierce mild, and a little bit like staring down an unmixed glass of Milo; all colour and flavour and promise at the surface, but nothing but fucking milk straight to the bottom. The overwrought and overwritten polish of their variably interesting (but, it must be acknowledged, uniformly well received) compositions dull the very ferocity that’s been building over the previous two acts before the band tell us to “raise the roof” and end their showing with a slow, plodding finisher that inexplicably ends with a defiant microphone drop. Sure.

At last, men of the hour mewithoutYou reward their fans’ patience tenfold, albeit with the slightest of curve balls at the outset, kicking things off with the delicacy of Yellow Spider before dropping straight into the flash and fury of Wolf Am I! (And Shadow), frontman Aaron Weiss all flailing limbs, and thereby instantly erasing any concerns within the crowd that we’ll be seeing anything less than a full-on rock show. MewithoutYou read their audience well, regularly dipping into their much-loved 2000s LPs Catch For Us The Foxes and Brother, Sister – Leaf (Linear) stands out as an early highlight – in amongst their most recent work from return-to-form record Ten Stories. Aubergine stands as a strong effort from their latest disc, though it’s their earlier work – A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains, Nice And Blue Pt 2, My Exit Unfair, main-set closer Son Of A Widow and rapturously welcomed encores January 1979 and In A Sweater Poorly Knit, during which Elliot The Bull join the headliners on stage for a visually impressive singalong set-up that continues to the finish line – that truly bring artist and audience together, the gang vocals and sweat-driven surges ensuring that ultimate encore, All Circles absolutely erupts before The Brightside’s bodies finally emerge into the night ravaged with elated exhaustion.