Snowman
Rosemount Hotel, Perth

I am watching Snowman, but it is in the spot-the-difference kind of way that you view a band after seeing them literally a bajillion times. Joe McKee, Snowman’s vocalist, has his eyes closed and he’s bent a little, spooky-crooning into the mic about the city’s animals coming out at night. He’s kind of grown-up now. He was boyish three years ago, looking like the most fashionable member of a dirty sharehouse who’d woken up 10 minutes ago, but now he is shirted, collared, and I think he’s shoed instead of sneakered.

My vision pans across: so is Ross DiBlasio, the drummer, and Andy Citarwarman, the guitarist, but with a white shirt instead of black, although Olga Hermanniusson maintains the visual symmetry with a black top. It’s kind of weird, in a nice way, that they look like they just leapt out of a promo picture, that they’ve gotten their shit that down. In these moments, when you realise that a band has completely left the realm you discovered them in, you wonder if you like them still, for real; like watching new episodes of The Simpsons. So you squint and tilt your head to the side a bit, trying to see if there is something of the old group there to be recognised, and all the music breaks on ‘Swimming With Sharks’ so that McKee’s stabby guitar hook can work on its own to punch you right in the face. And in the case of Snowman, yeah, a punch in the face will do it.

by Matt Giles