You, your best friends, your friend’s boyfriend, your Hinge matches, your new and old coworkers, your former stepbrother, your uni friends, the guy who served you at a vintage store, the dude who poured your beer last Sunday, and probably anyone you’ve ever met at an inner west house party, were all at the Gee Tee gig on Good Friday. It might be socially insufferable but there sure is good music in the inner west.
Perfect Actress began the night, adjoined by a Gossip Girl-esque Prada Marfa sign and establishing themselves as a Sydney act to be watched. Their set stirred sonic eeriness to post-punk perfection, offering a blend of everything Australian mainstream music is not right now: good.
The band felt like a breath of fresh air in a scene propped up on power chords, Australian accents, and Triple J. The Eora four-piece took and built upon pockets of progressive rock, post-punk, alternative and new-wave music.
If Gee Tee stripped back rock to its bare essentials, playing its songs short, fast, and loud; Perfect Actress was their antithesis, using those essentials and moulding them into a changing concept that can only be described as a musical curiosity. Songs like ‘(It’s All Just) Too Much’, and ‘Dream’ sifted the melancholy of their studio recordings and arrived at a unique uncomfortableness–perfect for a live performance.
Marcus Whale subbed in for Gus McGrath on vocals for most of the night, although sometimes seemingly sounding mismatched. Nevertheless, his voice offered a good response to Naomi Kent’s already mystical lead vocals.
However, the band’s fantastical energy was not matched by the crowd, and Perfect Actress felt out of place in the opening slot. Embracing the beauty of high concept, post-punk, and eternal weirdness, the band could only build so much on what it was given: a half-dead, half-empty audience. We eagerly await their solo gig.
Between sets, crowds milled outside on the bowling green. Your two favourite moshers fled the pit, seeking respite in Marlboro Reds and the fresh air from the busy sets inside. A much-needed discussion took place; why do rich white people keep drinking Victoria Bitter? Are VB and Reschs in right now? Do they think it makes them look like members of the proletariat? Does it have anything to do with their adoration of vintage Carhartt or workwear boots? Should we start means testing Reschs’ drinkers?
We missed most of Silicone Prairie, a solo project of the Kansas City-based musician Ian Teeple, performing with Buz Clatworthy (of R.M.F.C.) on lead guitar and other local punk musicians. The set followed the punk formula, and the audience ate it up. The crowd wanted to surf, although there were perhaps too many of them: phones were lost and people were shoved. The set’s highlight was arguably the tambourine shaking; perfectly timed, almost imposing tones intervened with the genre-formula garage punk. The midwest Americana complimented the local acts, reminding us of punk’s international reach.
No doubt excellently executing punk, the American act didn’t offer much new. While Silicone Prairie helped warm up the now drunk and excitable crowd, we wished Perfect Actress got the second spot.
Gee Tee (Eora synth/punk band) were arguably (and expectedly) the highlight of the night, and well-deserving of their headliner position. “We’re not fighting. We’re just dancing” read the back of a lone IDLES shirt in the crowd. The energised crowd was ready to dance, soon becoming beer-soaked, sweat-drenched and bruised in the pit, as discordant drums contributed to hearing issues.
Performing with a balaclava is pure theatre, and Gee Tee knows it.
Although a relatively calm punk mosh, the healthiness of the lively pit and pure ecstasy of the crowd at the Bowlo was no quiet matter. Gee Tee played songs across their discography, which extends way back to 2016. You could smell the testosterone, hear the screams, and feel the random boot landing on your nose from a passing crowd surfer. While the surfers almost hit the Bowlo’s 70s luminescent copper ceiling, we pondered the politics of the mosh. As usual, men dominated the space, tending to knock and sideline feminine bodies. A notebook made the rounds, and we scribbled our prescient thoughts. But nothing particularly new or insightful can be said on this matter, beyond this sage analysis.
Nevertheless, the mosh’s energy matched the band perfectly, using their unique blend of synth and garage punk with a consistent and uneasy buzz from the low-quality speakers to form an unforgettable live set.
Performing with a balaclava is pure theatre, and Gee Tee knows it. Frontman Kel Mason was in a world of his own; his convulsive dancing seduced the crowd into pure chaos. With one short track after another, the crowd became louder, denser and more forceful. Classic calls of ‘one last song’ encouraged the band to play on, but the night finished anyway, the throng dispersing, exorcised by the set.
The standout song for the night was ‘Commando’, played twice as fast and three times as loud. Gee Tee represented a perfect introduction to all things punk. The band encapsulates the shifting dynamics of the Australian music scene right now. Punk and techno is in, indie is out –– a well-needed reset on the boring stagnancy of stoned, shaggy-hair surfers who decide to make music. Maybe Splendour wouldn’t have been cancelled if Gee Tee was on the lineup.
