Last week, within the one circuit I was lucky enough to see a whole bunch of bands. These are those.



The Staves – an excellent girl trio from the unlikely spot of Watford. I didn’t see it all but you could see an interesting work in progress. You’ll get the idea here

but new better stuff is coming. They tour America with Bon Iver soon, so obviously he likes them.





Then it was on to see Gary Clark Jr. I like it when he rocked more than the more blues ones but he was still good. Here’s one I like a lot, which was obviously amazing on the night.

His album Blak & Blu is out now and hes in Australia very, very soon! If you miss it hes back for Big Day Out. The set was good enough that I went back for seconds later in the week.





Next up was Matchbox 20. They were warming up for an Australian tour and debuting new material. It’s easy to forget how good Rob Thomas is as a frontman because he seems so laid back about it all, or how much the ladies like him, unless you are standing next to the one who is screaming “I love you Rob” throughout (which is to say every woman in the building). The song that went down best (oddly, as it was a crowd of fans who knew everything) was their new one “Shes So Mean”.

Later that night I nipped off to see Frightened Rabbit and loved that. A passionate experience with this dark little track nailing it:

After a small change of country the next twist was aggressive German punk techno DJ Fukkk Offf (yes really). The show was very full on as one might expect based on his merchandise. Here’s an idea of his vibe on record, with a cute little clip that espouses his attitude.  I sort of like the idea of a “fukkk off” good remix though! 

I think Nickelback might benefit from one of those but I dug the bit of their show we snuck into. You know their shtick, but they did it pretty well.

Next up was a record company party and the FUN show. I thought vocalist Nate seemed a touch tired at first and it was a hard crowd to move actually despite their smash hits. But the audience quick cut loose when this came out:

Natch. And the cover of the Stones (“you cant always get what you want” including – I guess – a good crowd to play to) was good as usual.





Then I nipped off to enjoy some swellness from the very interesting Charli XCX. Darker than I expected and I dug the stand up drummer too. She covered this very well:

 Mad german band Bonaparte next. This gives you an idea. Then just after midnight we headed out to see Swedish artist Dante. This one was a global A&R scrum/ clusterfuck as the vibe is huge. It was a good show in a tiny room & Dante delivered a short but well received set of Electronic based pop songs… the tunes were very good so watch for his name even if we all felt that maybe the vocals could be stronger! Potentially he was just nervous given the industry makeup of the crowd!

Here’s one of his song’s. Pretty sweet.

Hopefully the artist wasn’t aware of just how closely everyone was listening…





Finally an eclectic week rounded out with my favourite of all – Icona Pop. In their own words on the night, “two best friends doing what they do love”. They DJ’d, sang and partied hard. I stood by the bass bins and their bass drop nailed it. Naturally, the hit went down best:

They will be welcome when they make it here.



 

I suppose it would be greedy to say that I was bummed out to miss the Circus night back at home. Partly because I wanted to see this dropped live

but also because this single (and better this video) smashes it.

But when I got home I watched it anyway! Some big live sets across a big week of music.