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Portland based White Hinterland turn the lights down low, light a couple of candles and turn up the charm offensive. Singer Casey Dienel oozes a sacharrine sexuality throughout the performance, enhanced by a near schizophrenic loop pedaled layering of her voice punctuated by occasional rogue yelps.
Their sound is incredibly glossy and full for a two piece – a combo of the ethereal and otherworldly juxtaposed perfectly against visceral, mixer and effect pedaled urban-isms supplied by ‘magic maker’ Shawn Creeden.
An almost unrecognizable and sublimely outstanding rendition of Justin Timberlake’s My Love closes what is a toe curlingly exquisite performance, offset by a theatre of expired gasps, an obsession with the off-kilter in house smoke machine and amorous attempts to invite the cautious, gobsmacked audience to ‘get a little bit closer…’
Dutch quintet Oh No Ono are an entirely different barrel of monkeys. A helium infused, high energy and frankly adorable unity of a countless array of genres, their ragged-dapper hipster styles – brogues with sweatpants held up by braces = YES – are further charmingly accessorized by perma-smiles so wide you can’t help but smile back.
Every song is ridiculously catchy – listening to them is akin to being tickled to the point of the near unbearable – in a good way. The crowd, now hopped up on purse friendly Red Stripe have braved the intimacy barrier and are now busting out their finest quirk-indie twitch moves.
Christ, their song finales are incredible too. Discordant, organised chaos which fists, pummels, winks, tinkers and plays against time frames and the structure of the rest of the song.
A farewell performance of Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles, replete with dream-skipping ambience and tumultuous monotonous drums, which cascade into a symphonic slowed down slew before quick pacing back into a furious, divine, heavyweight assault.
By the time Dashiki wearing, beard branded Archie Bronson Outfit take to the stage the crowd are wonderfully, criminally rowdy – and quite fucking right because they’re hypnotically awesome.
Downbeat vocals carried by an occasional chorus of harmonies and sabotaged by drumming which hits you in the gut and moves you to absolute spasm. Spacey, distant but unavoidably direct, their psychedelia hypnotica drones and galls out into the night as those of us aware of the 1.30am school night status head home (like morons) to sleep, and also miss out on the wonder that is Max Tundra. Gutted.