Obviously there's an A&R dudey out there who didn't do their job properly.

Republished from Buterboxmedia.com

Red Riders EP Launch: The Hopetoun Hotel. Saturday 22nd August, 2004.

When the weekend supplements from the broadsheets print one of their breathy, ironic pieces on a subject that’s close to my heart - as happened yesterday, and will again next weekend ad-infinitum - it becomes crystal clear to me that a shrewd analysis of the status quo is long overdue. Thus, when the house full sign appeared at the Hoey by 9pm last night, it was the door girl, lady or even babe, whose graceful hand hastily scrawled the message. Anything, at all, but the media diluted: door bitch.

Such transparent exposures on the bubble of celebrity are hardly surprising since our world’s become one big VIP lounge. Hostesses (a hostess is a waitress who only carries plates to celebrities) pontificating on celebrity recording artists doesn’t change the way we view the artist. However, if a hostess complains about the celebrities to who she’s banging plates down in front of long enough she apparently ends up with her own reality TV show. It’s the glass age we live in. And it’s also the name of the first support band tonight.

Frontman for the Glass Age, Ben Maher looks the business. Crowned with a semi ‘fro he’s more Leo Sayer than Peter Frampton and appeared quietly imposing without his guitar rather than with. Still, he is young and “The Watch” showed promise without the repetitive servility towards ham adolesence inhibiting parts of his band’s bracket tonight. (The drummer with a cigarette dangling from his lips is a fine rock ‘n’ roll image, providing he looks to be a genuine smoker.)

The set included all four songs from their Yellow Demo EP, which as well as being offered for free on the night, has made the 50% Australian content playlist of FBi.

While following through from a reasonably good start so far eludes many of the ideas of The Glass Age, a change of musical direction - spoken about in between songs - could help balance out the brightness of those fifth-hand philosophies with a little sepia-toned darkness.

Paul Ward is the keyboardist for The Tranquilizers, whose clearly been listening to his fair share of Brian Wilson. His voice is full of attractive little tricks and mannerisms which mostly sound quite convincing. He also bears a passing resemblance to Tim Freedman from the Whitlams and with a couple of his Kiwis mates has relocated to the musically adventurous city of Melbourne. Their first single for the night is: “Stop, Go” and was cut back in 2002.

Considering its the first time they had been in a recording situation its arrangement resonates with a low-density deadpan. It appears on the Shake Yer Popboomerang Vol. 2 compilation, which was launched earlier this year during another rollicking night of delight at The Hopetoun Hotel. The Suits and Tamas Wells also played at the launch, and both appear on the same feisty recording. Tonight it appears that The Tranquilizers, while gliding up the Hume Highway, burned a few copies of a pensive self-titled five song EP for the Hoey’s merch table. The label name on the EP is Walk With A Swagger and for all I know, might maintain their offices in a Tarrago. Ward’s maudlin voice quavers the harmonies well enough, but the set sounded too coyly artistic at times. It came across exquisite when the fragility worked, but awkward when the patronized ingenuity sounded solemn. Paul mentioned that The Tranquilizers try to let the instruments create the sound. Which if I understood him correctly, complicates things a bit. An urgent dilemma around artistic development can wedge a band in if they become too hooked on cloying experiment. Musically though, several thousand more road miles might be their best antidote to stagnation. And for sharpening those small snippets of surrounding heroics they’ll continue to gather along the way.

It might simply have been a Saturday night thing but the centre-of-hip status currently being enjoyed by The Red Riders looks like it began life in the traditional way. The place was lousy with sturdy framed art college girls from nice families doing the one-night-of-their-life at the Hoey shuffle. Image has to start somewhere I guess and together The Red Riders look so complementary without being ludicrous that in time they may manage to appeal to almost everyone. Their souped-up rock sounds like its been seived through the Cheesecloth Age of their parent’s Foreigner albums, and its competency brought some desperately needed guts into the night. The anti-star, anti-pretension function hardly ever misses, particularly when the estranged malcontent element is left out. The instantly attractive melody lines and non-pompous dry wit of single “Tune In/Tune Out” isn’t greatly imaginative but still offers a dramatic splash of bitchery anyway. Drummer Tom Wallace looks a model of zen-like composure and his meticulous, bedrock strokes goad a leaping, metrical growl from Mark Chapman on his Rickenbacker bass. Adrian Deutsch struck some unashamedly early - that is to say: sincere - Timmy Farriss moves, and throughout the set was the authoritative voice of his deeply switched-on cohorts.

The unbridgeable gulf in the music industry between conformist trash and elegant, enlightened triumph is bossed by producers of empty, tricksy and emotionless safe bets. The true monstrosity of this sad fact isn’t just the earnest snob appeal that first appeared, and then idolized our new breed of conveyor belt popstars, but the way in which they serve to castrate our live music scene into inertia.

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The Red Riders self titled EP is on the Reverberation label. They will be appearing @ Newtown with theredsunband on September 4.

- Peter Thornton August, 2004