Mindset

The mind is an incredibly complex piece of bio-machinery, the extent of which I am not going to even pretend to understand. It translates sensations and inputs into our senses and then triggers the release of chemicals to guide how we feel about a thing. Memory is then a separate kettle of fish, which can be completely divorced from the feelings that were felt at the time of an event. Hindsight being 20/20 and reliving a memory with rose coloured glasses are common preconceptions with how we interact and subsequently feel about our memories.

The above is a core reason, why I prefer to write my reviews immediately after a show, when the experience is brand new, fresh and my subconscious hasn’t had time to generate significant variations in how I had felt at the time. This blog departs from that rule and also explores other personal rule breaking regarding this gig.

 The concert in question was Spiderbait’s second Brisbane show held last Sunday, 5 July 2026. The Saturday night show had sold out, and judging by the crowd that was already present during the three opening acts, the Sunday night concert must have been close as well.

To be completely upfront, Spiderbait is not part of my normal music rotation, and I had held off purchasing a ticket until around midday on the Sunday, when in a cloud of nostalgic longing (following a week of being sick with the flu) I figured that they were surely going to play Black Betty which having been released in 2004 was smack-bang in the middle of my formative high school years and is the only Spiderbait song I could, to this day, actually name.

In any event, by the time I needed to leave to go to the Tivoli, the traffic on the Bruce was already fucked (as usual for a Sunday evening, or really any time), and I was regretting having to leave home. I had also being flagging that afternoon as the residual flu symptoms made themselves heard. Regardless, I had paid $90 for a ticket mere hours before and figured that surely I would get there and end up having a blast.

I had seen the set list times posted that afternoon, and was happy that doors were opening 30 mins earlier than the previous night when Spiderbait had been scheduled to start their 90 minute set at 10:00pm. The promise of a finish of 11:00pm, was doable for a Sunday night, even if it meant that by the time I got home and typed a review, I likely would be in bed by about 2:30am. Not ideal for a Sunday night, when I needed to work on Monday and the associated sleep debt would probably take a couple of days to be recovered, but certainly doable.

The Tivoli is one of my favorite specialist live music venues in Brisbane. IT has that combination of old-worldly charm of a traditional theatre, with a large stage and a lowered main dance floor bookend on both sides with railed raised standing areas in a horse shoe shape and an upper floor mezzanine which extended in that same horseshoe style essentially right up to the stage. I have seen multiple shows there now from a range of positions, including from the mezzanine, the dancefloor and the main floor raised edging. The venue also has long bars in annexes on both sides of the dancefloor, which are physically separated from the dancefloor, allowing semi breakout areas where people can retreat to if they are feeling overstimulated.

The Tivoli’s set up is a clear positive, because the mezzanine allows for more of their events to be all ages events, where the children and their guardians can be easily separated from the adults. A useful thing for both RSA requirements and the protection of children from the drunken antics of adults, as the Tivoli caters to the whims of their patrons by allowing traditionally riskier activities such as mosh pits, crowd surfing and the like. It would be interesting to see how their insurances respond to the additional liability, but that’s an issue for a different day.

The facilitation of all ages gigs is vitally important for the Brisbane live music scene. With the well publicized issues facing the scene of Gen Z not drinking, increasing cost of living pressures reducing the viability of touring acts and the increasing broaching by venues into areas of traditional artist earning domains (such as asking for a cut of merch sales), it is vital that the benefits of a live music scene are fostered into the next generation. It is gratifying then to see the Tivoli playing their part.

There were some interesting choices made by Spiderbait and their tour managers, in how the tour was setup. On the Sunday night the openers were Vipersnatch, The Gnomes and Custard, with the first two openers playing 20 minute sets and with Custard given 45 minutes.

In what was a further departure from the “norm”, the openers changed significantly throughout the tour and even differed between the Saturday and Sunday nights in Brisbane, with the Saturday night line up being Void, the Gnomes and Custard. Ultimately, only the Gnomes were booked across all tour dates.

I can absolutely understand the likely reasoning behind doing both the shorter sets and changing up the opening acts. Opening acts are, in many aspects, the repayment of a promise. They operate as a vital way of giving exposure to the next generation from the bands that have already “made it” and who quite often benefitted themselves from the exposure they got from opening for bigger bands.

It is an unwritten rule within the live music industry that the big, established bands, should help the younger bands in attempting to break into the industry. It’s the done thing to do, and is still very important in the fractured current state of the music industry, especially in the face of substantial existential threats to the industry of AI performers and the pitiful money that is made from streaming services.

It is why when those big acts break the convention and don’t include a local support act, such as what happened when Audrey Hobert toured, that there is backlash within the industry and, perhaps rightfully, a criticism that those acts are being greedy, selfish and have perhaps forgotten the helping hands they had been provided.

As an aside, I really enjoyed the Audrey Hobert tour when I got to attend the Fortitude Music Hall on 16 May 2026. It was an excellently put together show. But at $80 a ticket and a sell out crowd of at least 3,000 people giving ticket revenue alone of $240,000. You can’t tell me that they couldn’t have afforded to support a local opener. My personal views on Audrey are that she has taken an excessive position on capitalizing on every single available dollar, to the extent that it just makes her look greedy. One only needs to look at the Triple J Like a Version she did whilst touring in Australia where the song she covered and promoted was original from her brother. Like go and get that bag, but do you really need to be picking up every single penny on the ground. At some point it’s a bit gauche when there are literal starving artists out there.

It is refreshing then to see Spiderbait go in the complete opposite direction and they should be applauded for doing so.

I just wasn’t in the right mindset to properly appreciate it. I quite enjoyed listening to Vipersnatch and the Gnomes, however the 20 minute sets are simply too short to be able to fully appreciate the artists. It allowed them to play 4-6 songs depending on how much they talked to the crowd between songs. It also then created further delays with the change overs between sets. With doors opening at 6:15pm, by the time Vipersnatch went on at 7:00pm, we then had 20 minutes of music, 20 minutes off, 20 more minutes and then another 20 minutes off again before Custard played a traditional opening set of 45 minutes.

The problem with live music venues is that the standing around is annoying and if you aren’t feeling 100% or particularly keen to see the act, it can quickly become stifling. The reality is that if you are keen and get there 30 minutes before doors open, and then secure a good spot which isn’t likely front row, then you are going to be standing for 5-6 hours by the time the headliners finish at 11pm. Straight. In the same spot, since if you leave someone else will take that spot.

It doesn’t help that I am not fit, but the impact is that if you aren’t feeling it, the standing around is going to amplify that feeling of discontent, potentially to the point where you call it and leave early.

To their credit, Vipersnatch. Consisting of the trio of Lily, Riley and Kailee, were a high octane opener that immediately got the crowd going. It was awesome to see quite a large crowd present for them, and is always a positive sign. It was apparent that it was the biggest crowd that Vipersnatch had performed in front of. I say its apparent, because they literally said so, otherwise you would never have known as they managed to seamlessly fill the stage and the venue with their presence, making it clear that they belonged from the get go.

I have previously compared country music to that feeling you get when you are close to the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. Vipersnatch were traditional rock ‘n roll, the type evoked by a bundy ‘n rum, where the chaotic wall of sound that is their music physically slaps you in the face and forces you to be present. It is the music of an unruly mob, of a riotous sporting crowd where its indistinguishable whether their team won or lost the Championship, things are going to get smashed, or set alight, or both.

Vipersnatch fit the mold of Aussie rockstars down to a tee. From the frankly awe-inspiring mullets of Riley and Kailee (really, Warwick Capper had nothing on these ladies) through to their grunge rock clothing choices and tatted bodies. The visuals were completely backed up by their drum heavy songs.

The only negative was the set duration. By the twentieth minute, they had captured the hearts and mind of the crowd only to then have to finish their set just as people were fully invested.

The Gnomes are a four piece from Frankston, Victoria. It is an intriguing juxtaposition to compare the visual performances of the Gnomes with Vipersnatch. VIpersnatch evoked images of traditional rock ‘n roll, where it wouldn’t have been a surprise for them to stop the set and do a shoey or crash tackle a stage invader in a Roy Symonds fashion before continuing like nothing had happened.

The Gnomes also epitomized the rock ‘n roll mindset, albeit in a completely different interpretation. They had the big hair, plain t-shirts and skinny jeans that are the uniform of rock idols that teen girls would swoon over. Their carefully choreographed and synchronized kick jumps that they performed multiple times during the set were cute, and showcased their clear athletic abilities, if perhaps in a mum, look at what I can do type fashion. But that’s me being a touch mean and jealous of their swoon-ability. It would be hilarious just how fucked I would look if I even attempted to copy their polished kick jumps, let along whilst I tried to simultaneously play an electric guitar.

The Gnomes put on a polished, high energy show that demonstrated exactly why Spiderbait choose them to perform for every night of the tour. They obviously have talent in spades and I can easily see them becoming the next big thing in Australian rock.

Their songs were typic rock, even if I can’t recall any that really stood out to me, but that’s a more I was starting to feel out of it, then any criticism of the Gnome’s songwriting abilities. Regardless, the crowd loved them.

Once again, 20 minutes simply wasn’t enough time to fully appreciate the Gnomes, however I would be incapable, even in hindsight, to say that only having one of either Vipersnatch or the Gnomes perform a 40 minute set would have been a better result. They both added clear value, in a different manner, to the show as a whole.

The third opener was Custard. A four piece band that describes themselves as quintessential 90’s indie rock band. They made particular note that they had a collective age of 427 years. Which, unless there was a secret fifth member, they were looking amazingly well for a band with an average age of over 106.

Despite the fact that I had never heard of them (clearly my music knowledge is lacking), the crowd clearly knew them and knew them well to the point where it wouldn’t have surprised me if some people were attending purely to see Custard.

Nearly every song had large components of the crowd signing along to every word and that’s a very solid litmus test to judge the success of a band by, particularly when they weren’t even the headliner.

Ultimately, Custard’s music style fell increasingly outside of my preferred cup of tea for the evening, and when they decided to travel to the future, 2036 to be exact, through, presumably, the power of music, the concert as a whole was feeling a little too much like a fever dream for me and I decided that I just wasn’t in the right mindset to stay.

Some parts of me are disappointed that I didn’t stick it out. Everything that I saw on socials suggest that Spiderbait were electric and performed a show for the ages, I just wasn’t in a position to properly appreciate it. Ultimately, I was home and in bed by 10:00pm, and at that point I was entirely happy with my choice, and importantly, I still firmly believe that I got my money worth, even if I only stayed for Vipersnatch, the Gnomes and approximately two thirds of Custard.  

Mindset is a funny thing, yes I could have probably pushed through and likely would have ended up enjoying the Spiderbait set, but there was a risk that that if I continued with the experience it could have negatively coloured my perspectives of the night as a whole and that would have been unfair to the overwhelmingly positive impressions I had of Vipersnatch and the Gnomes.