Starting almost right on time – not quite as precise as the militant time slots enforced at the now-closed ‘Puppies’ but closer than you would normally expect in Wellington – Soft Plastics took the stage. It took me a little while to get it. The trio’s third song, an instrumental which sounded like something off an early Phoenix Foundation EP, had me nodding lazily with the crowd. A moment of post rock at the end of a song called Loser was closer to getting everybody hyped – and that’s what we wanted, because we were there, in Mint Chicks and Die! Die! Die! T-shirts, to see some furious, chaotic music – but the whimsical straightforward songs never quite got the blood pumping. If I closed my eyes and imagined myself listening under a rainy tin roof the music was great. But it was an odd choice of opener for a manic post punk trio.
The five-piece Dateline followed. They had some speed, energy, and a stern-faced percussionist which led to a bit more shuffling on the dance floor. The songs were well-structured (verses and
choruses) with 
plenty of melodic oohs and ahhs, but once again I found it an odd pairing to the main event. I was there to see something relentless, and I couldn’t
switch gear into these perky rock songs.
Wax Chattels brought down the fury I came for. Drummer Tom Leggett machine gunned his 2-piece kit like a mathy Jon Theodore. I loved the way he could hammer down grooves of boggling complexity and then stick to them. This repetition, no matter how bizarre the hits, let me latch on and find a sense of place in the madness. And that madness was thick. Amanda Cheng’s distorted bass was as percussive as it was musical. I have no idea what Peter Ruddell was doing to his synth set-up, but the abuse he inflicted upon it created possibly the most precise wall of noise I’ve ever heard from a live act. In the times when something musically unexpected happened (which was often), the band would nearly always return to an earlier groove. This cyclic playing style recalled a lesson from my tabla teacher: ‘Hear the first, recognise the second, anticipate the third’. Verses and choruses be damned – this was all about movements and moments: recognition and anticipation. Both Cheng and Ruddell took turns to glare and yell at us. I was mesmerised, rooted as much as I could be to San Fran’s unnervingly wobbly floor.
“We’ve got shirts, records and… tote bags,” said Ruddell in one of the strange, silent spaces between bursts of music. A pause. Then, “Apparently it’s a very Kiwi thing
to hock shit on stage?”
The crowd leaned 30 and above; it was the Flying Nun crew – the folk who came of age in the 90’s underground, hit their late 20s confused as the Wellington dance and pill revolution hit, and now, all suits and management, were climbing in an out of rare pockets of alternative music in an otherwise adult Kiwi life. Or perhaps I’m projecting – when I saw The Mint Chicks on the same stage in 2006 Kody Nielsen hung upside down from a beam while we raged and tore at each other. Now there were too many glasses of wine on the dance floor. Only a small, dedicated pile of giant dough boys even got close to moshing as the rest of us kept a cautious eye them. I suppose I imagined waves of shoving and sweat, but most of the crowd seemed to jerk politely and try to make sense of everything. After Cede, a sub two-minute cathartic scream-fest from Cheng featured on the band’s latest album, Clot, the guy behind me muttered to his mate, awed, “Oh my god what the hell? that was so good.” It really was.
Photo Credit: Garry Thomas Photos
