Sunday, February 18, 2007

Farewell

Do you feel flat? Is something missing in your life all of a sudden?

Well, it could just be that you are mourning the impending loss of influential Melbourne label Candle Records, whose thirteen year old life is nearly at an end with the final legs of the Candle Farewell Concerts held over the past two nights at the Corner.

Fans were treated to a little bit of everything at the gigs. We witnessed a final performance from Ruck Rover, a reunion from The Mabels, the usual band swapping shenanigans (Louis Richter and Phil Romeril better known from Mid-State Orange and The Small Knives respectively, played with no less than four of the acts each), and were inconvenienced by some rather messy plumbing problems in the Corner bathrooms.

As far as performances go, my favourite Melbourne band ever - The Lucksmiths - were the highlight. Fun, witty and tight as ever, Tali, Marty, Marky and Louis were in great form, and their improv repartee was on the mark again as well. I was kinda hoping they'd make a big announcement about a new album, a new tour and that they'd play for about 45 minutes longer, but I guess the night wasn't really about them, so that was probably wishful thinking. Here's a tracklist anyway: (Sorry I didn't write it down at the gig so it might be slightly out of order)

Young and Dumb
The Music Next Door
Sunlight in a Jar
A Hiccup in Your Happiness
T-Shirt Weather
New Song
Untidy Towns
The Chapter in Your Life Entitled San Francisco
Fiction
Midweek Midmorning

I also really enjoyed the energy from Anthony "Atko" Atkinson on Friday with his band the Running Mates. For anyone that hasn't heard 'She Let Him In' from his latest release Loyalty Songs - check it out. IMO it's one of the best written guitar pop songs of recent times. (Note: I give extra points to bands with lap steel.)

Atko backed up with The Mabels on Saturday. With their distinctive brand of contemporary aussie indie folk and heartfelt personal tales of love on tracks like 'Streets of Brisbane Town' and 'Caravan Park Girlfriend', the Mabels impressed the crowd who had made it there for the early start.

A special mention should also go to country pop band, The Small Knives. These guys have been invited by the Dirty Three-curated All Tomorrows' Parties festival in London (other Aussie artists include Nick Cave, Art of Fighting, The Devastations, The Drones, The Scientists) so are possibly set for bigger things. I thought because of this they would have had a more prominent position on the bill on Friday night, but they were impressive nevertheless. They mostly played tracks from their rich melodic wistful release of 2004, Rain on Tin, but also previewed brilliant new song 'Hey' .

Probably the biggest song highlights for me came from Darren Hanlon. Number 1 highlight was 'Buzz' from The Simpletons which Dazz played in his encore. Unfortunately I didn't know much about the Simpletons prior to the gig (get Simpletons 101 and the story of their late lead singer Shane Gelagin here), but this song gave me the gooseys for some reason. I think it must have been the presence of Simpletons bassist Brad Cheers, who joined Dazza for this song and bounced around on stage like it was 1995 again.

Number two highlight was the gloriously quirky '(There's Not Enough Songs About) Squash' [ Here's an MP3 and interview with Dazza from Squash Magazine!].

But that's enough about the bands. The night was really about one man, the head of Candle Records - 'Crouchy'. There were so many thank yous to Crouchy that we thought there might be someone skolling out the back every time his name was mentioned.

While it might seem like a cliche, whenever you see the Candle bands play, they do seem like a bit of a family. Most of them are obviously great friends, and as a result they seem to thoroughly enjoy playing with each other. A lot of this must be due to Crouchy. While I've never spoken to Crouchy (Unless you count him telling me at Polyester that it all comes to $80.90 as speaking), from his normal demeanour and farewell speech he just seems like such a humble unassuming, nice guy. I think this would contribute a fair bit to the success of a independent label like Candle.

To end the festivities Crouchy was given a framed aluminum record - a fitting present given the lack of commercial focus of the label. On the Friday night the Candle labelmates all manned the stage for an enjoyable, yet quite shambolic performance of 'We Are the World'. Saturday's show intended to end with a more refined finale - a lovely rendition of 'a song they all love', 'Bye Bye Pride' from The Go-Betweens, but it was too early for the gig to end there. And we got 'We Are the World' again - this time complete with impersonations from Mark Monnone (Ray Charles) and Darren Hanlon (Bob Dylan). It was cheesy, but hey, it was fun (and better than Friday's botch up), and I loved it. Then the lights went up, the background music went on, and that was it.

Goodbye Candle.

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