Chapterfest

This year’s Chapterfest had slightly inauspicious timing – the night before Northcote music carnivale High Vibes – but Melbourne punters are a relentless bunch. Despite the miserable weather, they file in and pack out the Tote’s downstairs band room and upstairs Cobra Bar. Following Chapter Music’s sold-out 18th birthday celebrations in January, this may be no big surprise. The event is also timed to coincide with the release of Crayon Fields’ new album All The Pleasures Of The World, and the merch table – flogging this among other Chapter Music releases – has a flood of buyers.

This being said The Tote – Melbourne’s sticky-carpeted musical Mecca –generates a very different vibe tonight. Punters sit cross-legged and passive in Grade One formation on the ground. People pardon themselves as they brush past. Nobody puking, weeping or arm wrestling in the girls toilets. The smell of patchouli in the air. Then it dawns on me: indie kids, they’re out in force and my, are they a different breed.

Chapterfest features a few highly conceptual, experimental, prog and indie pop-rock bands. The first band Bum Creek kinda skim all these classifications. My expectations are low, as their MySpace page looks like Vice magazine threw up all over it. They also describe themselves as “outsider fart”, which is similarly stomach-turning. And while it might be hard to discern behind the Jim Morrison beards and ’70s hair, they look young and have an unexpectedly dark psychedelic, even tribal, undercurrent. They’re a frenetic live band, with so many pedals and instruments they have to dash off stage and run to the other side to play each other’s gear. Only the drummer, who plays trumpet and beatboxes at one point, stays relatively stationary. Keys with effects, bongos, trumpets, creepy vocals, all create a sound that can only be described as composer Angelo Badalamenti and 1970s prog rockers Lucifer Was munching on LSD. I overhear someone in the crowd say that Bum Creek never sound the same twice and it’s difficult to imagine how they could replicate this wacky, sometimes wonderful and possibly a bit hyper-conscious avant garde sound experiment.

I rush upstairs for Dick Diver, an assured and unpretentious quartet with a strong rhythm section and a few cock-rock licks thrown in for good measure. Reminiscent of Pavement, their songs are dreamily mellow and melodic, but with a backbone. Vocal sharing between guitarists and harmonies with drummer Steph Hughes (Home & Hosed co-presenter) have a distinctly Aussie intonation and are part of this band’s strength. But their incisive and savvy songwriting are what will see them stick around for the long haul.

The Primitive Calculators are playing in the band room. They’re the badass, back-of-the-bus senior class of Chapterfest. The band are a real drawcard given their recent revival and their appearance on the re-released Dogs in Space and its companion documentary We’re Living on Dog Food. The Calculators, while 29 years older and with better gear, have lost none of their menace and appetite for destruction. This is a little pun, as Stuart Grant wears his working class Springvale roots with pride: a Gunners t-shirt underneath a red flanno. Starting with a surprising little spiel about the serendipity and miracle of existence, the Calculators then set out to deride and disassemble their opening salvo with songs like ‘Do That Dance’, ‘Cunt Life’ and ‘Nothing’, which is a sort of chronological cataloguing of nothingness from 1979-2009. The banter between songs seems to fall a bit flat on the crowd, who don’t seem anywhere near as effervescent as they should be. The Calculators are definitely appreciated, but shamefully without the anarchy and enthusiasm a more “rock” crowd would generate.

The evening is admirably well planned, but structured so there’s not much time to make it to the alternate stage – let alone to the toilet or outside for a quick ciggie – without missing a little of each set. I bowl over a few people to make it in time for The Twerps. The reviews I’ve read have made me slightly confused, so I receive a nice surprise when I encounter a pop-laced, ’90s-influenced, indie-rock band with teeth. Nevertheless, vocalist/guitarist M Dot has copped a little bit of flak recently, and I think I get why. His self-effacing manner comes across as manufactured given his on-stage confidence; they have a song called ‘Self Assured’, which I believe is ironically titled; and, yes, he does yelp in a shrill manner at times. It’s an indie affectation that clearly works for him – they get a great reception and have a strong fan base – but frankly I think the band would be better without it.

The promise of faux Hawaiian folk exotica (aka Jeremy Dower Y Las Palmeras de plástico) is a little too scintillating to skip. Dreamy Hawaiian lap slide guitar, what looks like an electric clarinet and a Roland percussion device, create a sweet, ethereal island sound. Birds twitter and an ocean laps gently in the background. The quixotic act is a dreamy, beatnik interlude that nicely complements the Panadeine Forte I’m nibbling.

From 10.30pm-ish onwards, it’s pretty hit and miss, largely due to an inability to actually get anywhere near Minimum Chips, who sound fantastic through the looking glass (crystalline vocals and a great organ sound); and Pikelet, who causes such an indie-kid commotion that I make a personal choice not to lose a limb for her sweet-sounding folk. By the time I battle through the Cobra Bar to catch Adelaide trio Hit the Jackpot, I’m a bit disappointed. Having nabbed the Sonic Youth support in 2004, I’m expecting something similarly early ’90s vintage. An off night perhaps, but it’s a set full of false starts. At one point singer Jess Thomas admits, “We haven’t played this song in a while”, and it tells, with the vocals starting off quite shaky. I’m not sure if the intention was to sound flat and discordant, but it didn’t work for me. Despite this, the band admirably pulls off a sort of musical chairs round robin, swapping instruments and vocals several times. Their talent shines through in the end, leaving my high expectations intact for next time.

By the time special guests Tenniscoats – a husband-and-wife psych-folk duo from Japan – mount the stage before a crowd of cross-legged listeners, I’m tossing up between fight or flight. It’s all very kooky, melodic and cute, but I feel like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation: cankerous and confused. A woman in an apricot jumpsuit joins the band on stage and I choose flight, leaving a spellbound crowd of indie kids, like a mother edging out of her kids bedroom after story time. To get a strong drink.

by Ruth McIver