My Disco & Absolute Boys review

I’m slowly becoming more and more convinced that tom drums make people lose any sense of self control. My Disco and Absolute Boys at The Zoo on Saturday night presented no exception to this rule.

Adelaide trensters Absolute Boys started off the evening playing to an unfortunately nearly empty room. The few punters scattered around The Zoo were far from given an empty performance, however. Absolute Boys were tight and expressive, combining catchy pop tunes with fierce and jagged eccentricities. Their stage presence I found to be polite, but extremely “cool” at the same time. And “cool” is definitely a key word for this review. Absolute Boys had a definite hipster vibe going on, with a clear vision of trend beaming out amongst the plaid button-up shirts, layers of bass delay and slashing guitar layered on top of the soft and precise vocals. But, you know what, I’m not even saying that’s a bad things. As hipster tre cool as the Absolute Boys may have come across, there was also a “reformed boys from the Adelaide burbs” vibe too, which acted as a sort of subtext to their whole performance. So don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved the Absolute Boys set. They were thoroughly enjoyable and made me want to dance, and this could never lead to a bad thing.

I admittingly didn’t hang around for the Slug Guts set. They seem to be playing every show in Brisbane lately, along with a couple of other bands who seem to be dominating all the shows and venues around town. And personally, I’m getting pretty sick of Brisbane’s entire underground music scene being represented by three or four bands. So this is the reason I didn’t stay to watch them.

While I found quite a few similarities between the Absolute Boys and My Disco sets in terms of repition, driving basslines, vast walls of sound and insistent minimalism, there was a real rawness harnessed by My Disco which makes it easy to see how so many people have become obsessed with them. They played their entire new album Little Joy from start to finish, with slight deviations away from the recorded version of the songs. As you have heard, Little Joy is not a participants album in the way that it is a mesmerizing one. My Disco have created a repetitious monster of the trance kind, and Saturday night they unleashed it onto The Zoo patrons with an unstoppable force. The little lighted worked perfectly with the minimalistic sounds of My Disco and created a great atmosphere. While I was a little disappointed when I found out they were going to play Little Joy from start to finish (why should I pay an extra $20 to hear something I already have), I think it made sense. It was a very complete set that went through all the right levels of energy and intensity like waves.

Overall, it was a really awesome night with quite an interesting lineup. There was all the genetic makeup here for a possibly mediocre evening, but My Disco brought their balls to the table and once again proved that they are probably one of the most unique bands in Australia right now, and definitely one of my favourite.

Liza Harvey