Crushing It

To have a crush on someone is one of subjectivity and has its roots in the feeling of being overwhelmed or ‘broken down’ emotionally with the metaphorical weight of the heart collapsing under the pressure of someone’s overwhelming existence. Therefore the stirrings of a crush exists as a form of infatuation.

It is not surprising that the term plays so well as the name of The Brightside’s four volume series where local bands with modest followings get to perform on a Thursday night with the stated aim as looking for trigger crush like symptoms in the audience when they ‘discover’ a new band that they enjoy and can then obsess over.

It’s a clever marketing strategy and is a continuation of The Brightside’s efforts to support grass root indie music in Brisbane. It is clearly being done for the love of the music scene since no one can be making money from this. The crowds have been modest with a range of about 30-40 people attending each of the first two volumes, and only a small portion of those attending seeming to consume anything more than a drink or two. Tickets are cheap at $15 online or $20 at the door resulting in a cost effective night for people to discover new music on a Thursday night.

The Brightside is a solid venue, with a great location in the heart of the Valley on Warner St, both indoors and outdoor seating areas and a cozy stage with a dancefloor and raised platforms allowing setting extending down both walls. The acoustics work well and their staff are friendly. Everything you could want from a live music venue. Their wooden floors aren’t even sticky which is a major positive and a rarity in similar venues.

For Volume Two we had the illustrious bands of Blind Roulette, Tawa Drive, Jane Street and Sienna Rose being our blind dates for us to get to know better and determine whether we would develop feelings for, so to speak. And feelings there were, with all of the bands capturing the audience’s attention and weaving chaotic rock energy through their sets and getting the audience dancing.

The first act was Blind Roulette. Being first on stage at an early time of 7:15pm is always going to be difficult and the 16 people in the crowd at that time didn’t really sell the rock concert ideal. Regardless, Blind Roulette played an awesome set with high intensity from the get go, although it may have been a little bold attempting to get the crowd involved in singing sections of a song back to the band when numbers are limited and there is a reasonable chance that the song is new to most attendees. The highlight of their set was their performance of Money Moves which has just been released and is well written and performed by the band.

There is no disguising the fact that the band members are highly skilled and are approaching the industry with the right mindset. When I ran into the lead singer at the bar afterwards and congratulated him on the set, all he wanted to talk about was how happy he was that he had the chance to perform with the other members since they were so talented and what a privilege it was. That mindset of putting the band first and genuinely being happy to be there gives the band a true feeling of authenticity and is a joy to see.

It is easy to be sucked into the whimsical pastime of people watching where you see random interactions and allow an overactive imagination to fill in the absent context and backstories. This is even easier with a live soundtrack being offered by the bands. Naturally every concert has its own cast of characters and spins a range of narratives and storylines throughout a night, with storylines twisting and twirling around and influencing each other.

It is perhaps fitting that the noticeable storyline my overactive imagination followed during the night had copious amounts of plot development over the four sets with scandals and plot twists galore but which ultimately encapsulates the feelings of a new crush and associated infatuation.

During the Blind Roulette’s opening set my eyes were drawn to a man and woman who were clearly familiar with each other and whom I pegged as dating or at least in a situationship type of relationship. They were young and carefree of typical university students who didn’t really care if they should up to their Friday morning lectures hungover.

They were easy targets for people watching as there was both only 16 people there (yes, I counted) and there was an immediate plot twist, as after coming in together and clearly being familiar with each other, they soon parted to watch the set from different vantages. Could this have been a friend zoning in the wild or a new-ish unrequited crush developing? Definitely prime time people watching drama and my mind raced to fill in all the missing context. They could simply have been friends, but that’s boring and my imagination would not stand for that.

The set finished with them on opposite sides of the dance floor with the guy drinking alone and the lady talking to a couple of guys.

The second act began with hazy New Zealand dream pop band of Tawa Drive starting their set. I enjoyed the soundtrack provided by Tawa Drive with a solid juxta positioning of the main singer with docent soprano harmonies provide by the backing vocalist. Their latest single Mountains has just been released and skillfully shows both their range and talent as a band.

It was during this second act that the plot thickened with our fledgling lovebirds, still watching the show from separate locations when suddenly a girl approaches our handsome hero and clearly asks about the unrequited nature of the apparent crush cause he points over to the leading lady and is clearly relaying where she is in what my imagination tells is either a frustrated or dejected fashion. They clearly have friends in the crowd, and its going to be fun to see how the drama develops. By this stage there is a slightly bigger crowd at around 26 people (I did a second count). By halfway through the set, our hero has disappeared and our leading lady has begun hanging out with a photographer taking pictures of the event. Questions abound, and my imagination is working overtime in an attempt to determine whether she already knew the photographer or whether they just met. The hero is conspicuous in his absence.

Fortunately, the soundtrack and energy being provided by Tawa Drive is awesome and the growing crowd is clearly enjoying themselves.

The third act is commenced by the garage-psych rock band Jane Street. They encountered some technical difficulties where their music was too powerful and tripped a circuit breaker, causing a delay where the keyboarderist was able to entertain the crowd with a set of truly atrocious punny jokes. A particularly low point was reached with; I didn’t like this moustache, but it is growing on me. Fortunately, the technical difficulties were defeated and the show was able to go on.

A standout was Jane Street playing the title track of their upcoming EP, The Fear, which was an absolute banger and showcased just why Jane Street are a band to watch. I truly enjoyed their set and their original songs which managed to showcase each of the talents and specialties of the band members naturally through the variations within the songs.

It was during this third set that the people watching took a scandalous turn. Our handsome hero had yet to reappear, and our leading lady was becoming cozy with the photographer with hands resting in places that spoke of a deeper connection (to be clear, it was all very PG-13, but still). Whilst there was possibly sufficient context to suggest that perhaps I had potentially drawn the wrong initial conclusion and that our hero and leading lady were in fact just friends, and she was actually with photographer dude, that context was boring and as such immediately rejected as being erroneous.

The logical conclusion was that our handsome hero would was going to return see the photographer dude’s hand where it shouldn’t be and then result in a good old fashioned Bridget Jone’s Diary kerfuffle where if there was a water fountain close by both the hero and photographer dude would no doubt end up in it. Really, the only reason this didn’t come to fruition is that Brisbane City Council haven’t provided enough civic pride to have Romanesque water fountains scattered through BrisVegas (truly a missed opportunity).

Presumably, in lieu of fighting for the lady’s affection our Gen Z hero has taken the much more adult and appropriate course of action of accepting his fate, especially since it is generally accepted everywhere (outside of Trump’s America and our own One Nation and LNP parties) that women have full autonomy and should get to freely choose how to spend their time without the inherent objectification of two guys fighting over them like they are incapable of making their own choice.

Regardless, the Jane Street set finished without any fountain baths and really any confrontations. Which from a venue standpoint is a clear positive, but still disappointing from a removed neutral observer who imagination had already written the storyline.

Finally Sienna Rose took the stage with her band and the plot twist was simultaneously shocking and extremely fitting in with the theme of the evening. Our leading lady was in fact Sienna and our handsome hero was her drummer. My gasts were well and truly flabbered. Turns out Sienna, who I was only aware of from Instagram, had in fact dyed her hair and therefore completely unrecognisable with silvery blonde hair.

Sienna’s set was an awesome blend of covers and original songs with an energetic performance that showcased her vocal range and where the skill of her band really shone through. The pick of the covers were Nothing But Thieves’ Amsterdam along with a fitting Paramore cover, as the comparisons between Sienna and Hayley Williams are clear and obvious.

It may be a coincidence or it could have been a masterstroke if planned however Sienna’s final song which closed out the night was Yours which is being released next Friday. The song encapsulates the essence of a crush, being about being infatuated with someone, finding out that they like you back and then later discovering that they are actually not a nice person at all and as a result squashing the crush.

The irony is not lost on me where I quickly became heavily invested in the interactions of a couple of complete strangers. Much like a crush, the feeling built quickly and then passed once my brain caught up to my imagination and pointed out the situation really was not anything like it seemed. Even though the bubble was eventually popped, I don’t regret delving down that rabbit hole, if only because it created a more solid connection in my mind with Sienna Rose, her band and their music and that’s really what these new crush nights are about.

Ultimately, these nights at The Brightside are about giving that initial push to the audience to see a band they may not have normally come across and kick start that infatuation stage. If these bands get a couple more followers out of it, if they build a little more momentum or just have the chance to fine tune their performance in front of a real life audience of people who aren’t just their family and friends, the series should be considered a success.

On that note, take a chance, go and see one or both of the remaining two volumes on 25 June and 2 July and see if you form a little bit of a crush on a local band. Perhaps just leave Netflix the role of creating imaginary drama instead of allowing people watching and a vibrant imagination to run too wild.