Belles Will Ring
The Annandale, Sydney

It’s the type of rock music with vocal harmonies and a tambourine. And very good rock music at that – slow and full-bodied, with little bursts of noise and psychedelic pop that turn into explosions on stage. It may have happened earlier, but I didn’t see it until this weekend. Sydney five-piece Belles Will Ring have graduated from geeky retro group to geeky rock stars: from the arty film clip the crowd were subjected to before the gig started to the retina-piercing strobe light fired up for each song’s climax and which, naturally, made one of the poor musicians dizzy and had to be turned off for the encore.

If it’s all about momentum, Belles Will Ring are hot. The leap from last year’s lacklustre single ‘Mad Love’ to solid debut album Mood Patterns was impressive, but neither record gave an indication as to the quality of Saturday night’s performance. It started with a few hiccups – rough vocals from the two frontmen, Liam Judson and Aiden Roberts I think their names are, that jarred against the beautiful melodies behind – but smoothed out quickly enough. It ended in a swirl of gorgeous pop harmonies, freak-out blasts of noise and a somewhat ecstatic feeling. Outside, on the cold and unfriendly-as-fuck sidewalk, someone I’d just met turned to me and said: “When you go to see a local band, you don’t expect something like that.” On Friday I was a critic and on Sunday I was a true believer.

by Andrew Ramadge