Flip Out Festival - Corner Hotel, September 6

After the longest UV Race set in living memory – nearly 30-minutes worth – Sydney’s Straight Arrows mount the main stage in front of a half-full house. The afternoon sun seems to be keeping a lot of folks upstairs in the beer garden. Suckers. This is taut trim and terrific stuff. When your music is cut from a very basic mould it doesn't leave you a lot of room to go wrong or to get off track, even for a second. Three chords do the business most of the time, except for the odd four-note solo. Straight Arrows are using today as a springboard to get on the road behind a new single; here’s hoping they can keep the energy levels up all the way.

There’s nothing wrong with the Standells or the Sonics in my book. They both have impressive back catalogues, something the Frowning Clouds are perhaps a bit too keen to remind you of.

The Pink Fits take a lot of love and respect for the past and translate it, update it, though their pink-suit stage wear has long gone by the wayside nowadays. Their background, especially with guitarist Lenny Curley’s time in the legendary Asteroid B612, gives them a hard edge that stands them in good stead. Not that anyone here today is a revival act, of course, just that within some often narrow confines, the Fits do a fair bit more with the format. Frontman Karl Weber looks like Bored! frontman Dave Thomas – crop haired and beefy – and like Bored!, they hammer out their set. There’s simply no other way to describe it. In true garage fashion, no song runs over two-and-a-half minutes. The band aren’t happy with their sound, and they are clearly having some technical problems early on but it's nothing that can’t be fixed on the run and the crowd don’t seem to notice anyway. Troupers that they are, they also score the first encore of the day too, squeezing two numbers in when told to play one more and get off before the Dead Farmers start taking a sledge hammer to the place over on the second stage.

Today’s outing is the Stabs’ first live show since January – they have put things on hold for a few months while overseas commitments were filled. Three fairly nondescript looking but clearly passionate guys, it’s arguable that they raise the stakes a little higher than anyone playing tonight. They like to push the envelope, the pigeon hole, the holding pen, the cattle yard, and tonight they pull off a pretty bold stroke by playing all new material. None of Dirt’s murky songs of obsession and murder get a look in, and they don’t talk between numbers. Their only real concern seems be to make each song louder than the last. Overall it’s a glorious demonstration of powerhouse dissonance: relentless and mesmerising.

If there needs to be some kind of finish, a logical place to end this thing, Eddy Current Suppression Ring are probably best placed to provide one. It shows in the attitude of guitarist Mikey Young when I speak to him about 15 minutes before they are due on stage. Despite their headline obligations, and at the end of a busy day for him as one of the festival organisers, he's unfazed by the attention or the weight of expectations. There will be no fuss, no set list. It's a just a show, he says, and while plenty of the recent Primary Colours LP will get a run, it'll get no more than it's due.

The room fills quickly before they go on, when a fairly large contingent who seem to have ignored the rest of the day's acts pile downstairs and form an instant mosh pit down the front, bringing the thick smell of sweat, beer, aftershave and sausage smoke with them. After eight-and- a-half-hours it's a shame to see the faithful have to concede so much floor space. But ECSR regardless, are on top form; energised and ready. As usual, singer Brendan is the only one who really moves. He prowls and flexes, working himself into that strange zone where he does his best work.

They translate their raw, sparse live sound well to record, but the recorded version doesn’t ever quite do them justice. Those building repetitions of ‘Sunday's Coming’, the swagger of ‘Cool Ice Cream’, the sheer energy of ‘You Let Me Be Honest With You’, their range and spirit provide a high point to the end of the day.

When all is done, and I’m heading home down the street with my ears ringing furiously, I realise that my previous dislike of festivals may have been because I’ve never been to one that really gave me what I wanted. That’s fixed now. Roll on next year.

Trevor Block
Photography by Brett Frost

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