Naked On The Vague
Oxford Art Factory, Sydney
Friday October 12, 2007 with 0 Mess+Noise champion in attendance.
On a Friday night, Oxford Street is an obstacle course in trashbag hopscotch. Tonight there’s no solace at the Oxford Art Factory: descend the stairs and you’re in the main bar, a veritable fishbowl of Vice gloss dos-and-don’ts (emphatically dos) squashed into a cellar sized watering hole. Folk speak with high-volume, elongated accents, brandishing green-bottle premiums.
Enter the band room and the crowd is sparser, though still substantial. It’s potentially superfluous but nonetheless interesting to note that the two crowds look the same. The primary difference is that, in the fishbowl, loud synthetic 2/4 beats languish in the background, whereas in the band room, Naked On The Vague pummel onlookers with a sound made musical via one tentacle plunged firmly in rhythm, the other flailing in a grotty, polluted atmosphere of noise. Matthew Hopkins and Lucy Phelan hardly look the part either: you know, they smile at one another on stage. If you can ignore that small detail for a moment, and focus on the blood progressively staining the pick-ups on Hopkins’ guitar – or the sweat shine glowing on Phelan’s face as she belts out English-tinged odes to self-destruction and hardly-giving-a-fuck, it’s almost exhilarating.
The overall impression though, is that Naked On The Vague isn’t a band suited to live performance. On record their noise/rhythm collusion feels cathartic. When songs like ‘Old Leader’ are stripped of their studio grime, they’re less menacing and more admirable for their audacity. Still, there is a very seedy element of disco here – and to this particular section of Sydney gig-goers, it’s clearly a disco worth moving to. I’d probably proceed with caution though, if I weren’t already convinced.
by Shaun Prescott
