Hey Rosetta! @ the Troubador, 09/01/2009

I must interrupt this blog's continuity, such as it is, to say something about Hey Rosetta!'s¹ Brisbane show last week. Having seen them at Woodford (twice) and nagged several people to see them in Melbourne (quite successfully), I was duty bound to see them play in Brisbane. Also, I wanted to, because they are awesome. Dead Letter Chorus were headlining, or possibly co-headlining with Hey Rosetta!, but [spoiler] sadly I didn't end up seeing them.

The Troubador is an endearing little venue up some stairs in the Valley, long and thin and with a stage so small there are guitar stands mounted on the wall. There are comfy-ish seats along the sides as well, which is handy for when the music does not warrant standing up.

The Support: At Sea

We arrived part of the way through At Sea's set, and I got briefly distracted by having to bellow at the ever-affable Romesh and Josh about my Melbourne friends and hear them get ephant's name wrong. Even after I started paying attention to the band I was not especially interested. There was a brief period of amusement when I realised that the configuration of Dead Letter Chorus as described to me by Stefan was the same: three tall guys wearing black plus a girl. Then I realised that At Sea had a drummer as well, so they must be At Sea and not Dead Letter Chorus.

At Sea were ... okay, I guess. They reminded me a little bit of Teeth and Tongue, but I think this was for the entirely superficial reason that both have a female singer in a dress and a band made up of boys. At Sea's singer did not play an instrument, just strutted and sang poutily, failing entirely to overcome my prejudice against singers in rock bands who don't do anything but sing.² I was powerfully reminded of all the classified ads that read something like "Heavy rock band seeks female singer." On the other hand, the band's only stylistic consistency seemed to come from the singer, who sounded a bit like 1990s Gwen Stefani propped up in front of a different band. Overall grade: a resounding "meh".

During the set I was mainly entertained by watching band members flit back and forth between backstage and the merch table, and playing "guess who's in a band and who's just going to the toilets". Oh, and by the fact that one member of At Sea looked like a taller Ben Lee with fluffy sideburns.

The Main Event: Hey Rosetta!

All six members of Hey Rosetta! on the little Troubador stage made for a tight squeeze, the more so because one of them had a cello. The Very Tall Guitarist looked even taller in such a small space, and there was an incident of approximately as much cuteness as three kittens: the bassist and the (significantly taller) violinist sharing a mic to sing backing vocals. I am fairly sure my inner voice went "ee hee hee!" and didn't stop until they stopped doing it.

The show itself was, unsurprisingly, excellent. Being so spatially concentrated only intensified Hey Rosetta!'s sound, and I was able to hear and appreciate more of the music's subtleties in an enclosed space than had been possible outdoors at Woodford. I was really impressed by the exceptional skill and musicianship on display, of every member individually but also of the band as a whole. In some bands everyone concentrates hard on playing together and nobody gets into any kind of musically transcendent headspace; in others, invididual members go off on their own individual journeys and the music doesn't hang together unless the poor drummer manages to pound the skins insistently enough. Hey Rosetta! play like maniacs, yet with such sensitivity and precision that you could be forgiven for thinking you are listening to some kind of extraordinary one-man-person-band.

Some things that I particularly liked:

• The wonderful ensemble playing frees up the drummer to add rhythmic texture to an already rich sound, instead of being stuck keeping time.
• Having two string instruments rather than one exponentially increases the awesomeness of a band. There's something about a (horn/string) section that trumps a single instrument every time, and I love the way these two bounced off each other.
• Mandolin!
• Having seen Hey Rosetta! a few times and listened to their album and EP, I recognised the openings of some favourite songs, which made me think that I was getting to know the band - so much more satisfying than musical one night stands, as Stefan so deftly metaphored.³

Hey Rosetta! won over what seemed at first to be a dubious-to-indifferent crowd - I was standing more or less at the front of a scattering of people at the beginning of the set, with an unobstructed view, but by the end of the set I was shifting about to see past the drunk tall people who had drifted in front of me. Hooray for Hey Rosetta!

Unfortunately, it was past the bedtime of a certain doctor,⁴ so Dead Letter Chorus remain an unknown quantity. I hear they are quite good, but having heard that about the Arctic Monkeys and Vampire Weekend in the past I will reserve judgement.

finis

1. How am I supposed to accurately punctuate that? Stupid bands with exclamation marks in their names. [↩]
2. This is not to say that they are never awesome - Matt Berninger "only" sings, after all, and The National are my equal favourite band of all time. But a singer who doesn't contribute anything else to the sound needs to be good. [↩]
3. 'To metaphor' is a verb now. You heard it here first. [↩]
4. Not a real doctor. [↩]