Watching the sun set in St Kilda, enjoying a tasty beverage and some Caesar salad. There are worse ways to spend a Thursday night. If this was first course, than some tasty power pop morsels in the Gershwin Room were the main course.
Local boys The Bowers kicked things off nicely. A four-piece with a nice line in sixties retro, they were a wonderfully noisy greeting for those arriving for the headline act. Tonight’s set featured some strong tracks like “A-Z”, “She Gets Shy” and the stomping “Ivy Climbing”. With a great sound (that would possibly sound even better if keyboards were added) The Bowers were a solid way to kick off the night.
Local stalwarts Even were up next. Lead singer/guitarist Ash Naylor was definitely tapping into his inner Jimi Hendrix tonight, with some very tasty guitar work. For a band that’s been kicking around for nearly twenty years, there is still a freshness and love of music they have that is to be admired. Powering through some fine selections from their back catalogue, such as “Black Umbrella” and “I Am The Light”, Even couldn’t put on a bad show if they tried. A class act that is always a pleasure to see live.
At around 11pm, it was time for the very impressive crowd in the Gershwin Room to get the Urge. The band kicked it off with “Effigy”, one of the best tracks of last year’s comeback release, Rock And Roll Submarine. Over the next hour and a half, the four-piece, led by original members Nash Kato and Eddie “King” Roeser, put forward a very entertaining set but, unfortunately, not one without some issues and flaws.
Throughout the set, the band seemed to be treading water and not fully letting loose. While giving it their all on stage, what was put forward didn’t seem to totally gel on a live front. It was as if all the pieces were there but they somehow failed to properly click into place.
The material from the band’s 1993 Saturation, which this scribe still thinks is one of the best albums of the nineties, got the best response from the crowd. It seemed to be a case of tapping that button marked ‘easy nostalgia’ more than anything else. However, the new material stacked up pretty well next to the older stuff.
Musical highlights included a great version of the title track of last year’s comeback album, Rock And Roll Submarine, a wonderfully drawn out and extended version of “The Break”, off 1995’s underrated Exit The Dragon, and “Positive Bleeding”, “Sister Havana” and “Woman 2 Woman”, off the sublime Saturation. It was that last track, halfway through the set, where the band seemed to really nail the classic power pop that they capture so well in the studio. There would be moments like this throughout the set, but unfortunately they were inconsistent rather than the norm.
As part of the second encore, they did “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon”, a Neil Diamond song they covered; made famous by its use in Quentin Tarantino’s benchmark nineties masterpiece Pulp Fiction. While admirably roughed up and done in a more Urge style than its recorded counterpart, tonight it felt cold, mechanical and almost like the band still feel obliged to play it live. At least the band weren’t gritting their teeth when they played it like they did in the mid-nineties, like it was the most painful thing in the world for them to do.
While tonight was by no means an embarrassment, one got the feeling it could have been much better than it was and that the band were trying too hard to recapture the magic of a period long passed. For those old enough to remember, it wasn’t as bad as when Urge toured Australia in the mid-nineties, an absolute train wreck of a tour. On that occasion, the band members could barely stand on stage, sing and/or play their instruments due to an unholy combination of tour fatigue, band in-fighting, and seeming generally drug fucked.
What is so frustrating about seeing Urge Overkill live is that one knows they can create brilliance in the studio. Saturation is proof positive of that, and there were some great moments on Exit The Dragon as well. The band seems to be unable to translate that fully into a live setting, which is a shame. They have created some great, crunchy power pop over the years that many people love, as was exhibited by tonight’s audience.
A solid, at times excellent, set but one that was frustrating and, at times, unengaging.
– Neil Evans
