Issue 5, Article 14
Yes, Melbourne. I'm guessing that most of you didn't make it to this show - shame shame. Actually, this was almost one of the worst nights of my year, but it ended up just being a great show. I spent the first hour of the show wandering around the streets of North Melbourne in a seemingly hopeless search for the Toucan Club. The problem with the Toucan Club is that 1) it's not a very good club and 2) it's not really the Toucan Club. It's actually called the Trafalgas, but apparently the owners recently decided to change the name. Not that they bothered to tell anyone about this, advertise the show at all, or give any indication that the two clubs were one and the same.
Once I found the club and forked over my $5 AU ($3 US - shows are really cheap here), the night began to brighten up a bit. Well, perhaps brighten isn't the best word - the rest of the night was filled with excessively dark and somber music. I arrived halfway through Sir's set, but I heard enough to be impressed. Very reminiscent of Low or Portishead (with fewer beats). One guy on drums and percussion and a lady friend of his on guitar and vocals. Stark, haunting, and very very slow.
After a brief intermission, the guys from the Hungry Ghosts wandered over to the stage and started fiddling with their instruments - progressing from tuning into what I suppose was music. Five minutes later the guitarist picked up a mic, muttered something incoherent into it, and the band started into their set.
The Hungry Ghosts are John Brooks on guitar and accordian, Tim Howden on violin and percussion, Jazza Boneham on guitar, and Steve Boyle on vibraphones. I don't quite know how you'd classify their music, but it fits in somewhere between chamber music and movie soundtrack territory - it's definitely not rock music. At the Toucan Club show, they meandered through a set of 5-10 minute epics of instrumental beauty, silencing the crowd with music that barely drowned out the traffic.
I suppose that you could compare them to The Dirty Three, Melbourne's other instrumental slow-core (their word, not mine) band with a violin. But while The Dirty Three play sleepy ballads for that late-night drunken stupor (all too common here in Melbourne), the Hungry Ghosts write music for a lonely, nostalgic drive through the wide-open country. Or something like that.
The Hungry Ghosts recently released a debut 4-song EP. Staying true to form, the EP is as hard to find as their live performances - apparently, all that remains is 500 copies in England. Go figure.
- Josh "Slowcore" Lerner