Knives at Noon and The Frisk (Young Lyre) @ Bodega, 22/07/2011

You go to a gig by the band that provided the tune for the Telecom Android phone ad, yeah that song, and of course you’ll go along with certain preconceived ideas about what you’re going to get for your hard earned dollars. 

But then when you arrive at Bar Bodega a four piece Irish blues folk rock band, complete with lap guitar, banjo and violin are playing and you don’t even know who they are because they weren’t on the bill originally. 

But they’re okay, a little Mumford and Sons, but rockier, rawer, but still the kind of music you’d expect to hear in a dirty, smoked filled bar at 4 am as you stare depressed into your beer and contemplate calling it a night. That is until halfway through a song when they ratchet it up, the lap guitar gets swapped for a hollow body rock machine, and the tempo picks up, the bass drum starts pounding and the crowd looks up and starts moving. You find out later that they might go by the name Mad Max (or even later that they’re actually called Liam McClurg and Coney Island Swamp Monster), which doesn’t seem like the sort of name an Irish blues folk rock band would have, but somehow it suits their anarchic style of music.

Then suddenly The Frisk are on stage, with no fuss, except to announce that they now, as of right now, go by the name Young Lyre. But no one cares what name they go by, because the people here know the music and that’s all they want to hear. You don’t know what to expect, but can’t help be swept away by the infectious rhythms – tight drumming, solid basslines and everything you want from a rhythm section. The energy in the room is high, people are jumping all over the place, the vocalist included. At one point there’s people on stage, running between band members, firing off photos, before leaping back into the crowd and dancing onwards. This is how rock should be, only it’s not just rock, there’s a dance feel to it and it’s difficult to pigeonhole, but it’s full on that’s for sure.

During the break between bands you notice that the crowd has thinned out and Knives at Noon haven’t even played yet. The lights go down and the music dies out as they take the stage and looking around you see that people are coming back, the room is nearly full again and then they’re playing. 

This isn’t the catchy dance music from the “teevee”, this is heavy, driving rock. The crowd doesn’t mind though, they’re right into it, even when mid-song, tempos change and the push from the music is gone. Even when you can’t see the band anymore, when the smoke machine goes into overdrive and obscures everything, when all you see is vague shapes in the smoke, lights cutting through giving everything a surreal effect, the music keeps the crowd moving. Then, just when you think you’ve got the band all figured out, they go and change things on you and suddenly they are playing dance music, they even play that song – the one you know from the ads – and the crowd just keeps on going. You leave, sore and weary from the dancing, thanking these Dunedinites for making the journey to Wellington to entertain us.