The Devastations
Meredith Music Festival, Melbourne

Sleazy and slinky in the diffused Saturday morning light, The Devastations were surprisingly well suited to the allotted pre-midday Meredith slot. Their brand of humid melodrama – and their signature morning-after celebrations, commiserations and commemorations of the night before – perfectly fitted the grey and sodden weather.

‘Black Ice’ veritably shook the remnant sleepers from their tents, the lot of them bursting zips and rolling down the hill as the bass line writhed up the amphitheatre. With phenomenal volume, the rockers ‘Rosa’ and ‘Mistakes’ pitted weary coffee-line heads against screaming guitar sections, and tom-pounding against camping-chair complacency. ‘Pest’ lifted the crowd from their eucalypt-lined setting, replanting them in the Hungarian capital, locating them among the “lower ranks” wandering the Danube and mumbling promises that “things will be different from now on.” Likewise, Devastations are a different band to the one that left these shores pre-Yes, U. They’re a better band, finding their own sound – sultry, assured – in the process of their European transplantation.

by Ben Gook