Perth’s The Bank Holidays seem to enjoy a nervous kind of fun. Sharing vocals three ways and harmonising at every available opportunity, the bright and sunny major chord cheer veered into plastic cheese mode, pre-sliced for our convenience. The two biggest problems were the lack of breathing room – overly harmonised, with no space to take us anywhere new or surprise – and the meticulous democracy of it all. Nobody took the songs or us by the scruff of the neck, the electric and acoustic guitars sticking to rhythm and leaving us without any leading lines, with no sense of journey. It was ‘pleasant’ enough, but all light without shade, a holiday you’ve forgotten the moment it ends.

Here to share wares from Seven Seven – album number seven – J. Walker and his revolving Machine Translations troupe opened their set with the album’s first track ‘Everything Feels New’. It does and it doesn’t – the acoustic guitar and Walker’s laconic drawl could have tumbled out of the too-straightforward Happy and Venus Traps Fly, but the electric guitar soon whisked us into Bad Shapes territory, the 2001 album that nailed the balance between organic and over-thought, a perfect collision of folk tradition and garish dress-ups.

The Celtic sea shanty taste of ‘Need a Miracle’ led gently into ‘Oh Ma the Sea is Rising’, the crooked rhythm opening welcome cracks in Walker’s voice, providing a rare glimpse beneath the surface. At his best with the kinked geometry of work like ‘Poor Circle’, there are also rare gems to be found at this softer edge, where his voice and stories evoke crumbly cliff faces tumbling into the sea. The most disappointing material falls in-between, lacking tension or vulnerability.

Working through most of Seven Seven, with a well-received, jangly ‘She Wears A Mask’ and solo ‘Amnesia’ slipped in, the set closed with the dense yet fragile looping lullaby of ‘The Long Goodbye’, a dreamy wash a la Art of Fighting’s ‘Skeletons’, as much about renewal and looking to the next chapter as a farewell. The ‘Hateful + Stray’ encore shook us wide awake; a dirty, mangled 4am dirge with bite.

by Benjamin Millar