Another Saturday night at the Corner Hotel with beers flowing and an interesting mix of people treading on my toes, eager to see the bands and spastic dance their arses off. Gun Street Girls got the party started with their fun, pub rock tunes. It was fantastic to see Dave Larkin back in action, the man howl’s like a werewolf under a full moon. Whilst Gun Street Girls lack the fire of Larkin’s previous outfit Dallas Crane’s live shows, they have a similar sound and are very entertaining to watch. The boys seemed to really enjoy themselves up on stage, like they were having a casual jam session at a mates barbeque on a lazy Sunday afternoon, joking with one another and messing around as they revved the audience up into a hip swaying frenzy.
Next up was James McCann and his Dirty Skirt Band with their blues tinged country stylings. Their sound is not the type of music I enjoy, and even to watch I found this band to be terribly unexciting and lacking any stage presence or charisma and that certain something that special performers have to grab your attention and make their music stand out from the crowd.
Lucky The Kill Devil Hills took to the main stage soon after and washed away the blandness with a brilliant, energetic set. The bad ass bastards from Perth had the crowd up and dancing and showed us all that rock and roll transcends both age and time (with the majority of the band looking old enough to have fathered us young-uns in the front row). Their music is a mix of blues, rock and heartfelt lighter in the air style ballads, with a vocalist who sounds remarkably similar to Caleb Followill. They tore through a ripper set, that lasted almost 2 hours, showcasing the material from their latest album Man You Should Explode. Highlights of the night included fantastic versions of Easy and Cockfighter, watching a slightly intoxicated couple attempting to waltz to Siam and a beautiful rendition of Lucy-On-All-Fours, which is a suprisingly pretty song given the lyrical content ‘Tonight I‘m with Lucy on all fours, she kiss me like a saint, then she fucks me like a whore’. The Kill Devil Hills and their dirty old school rock was more fun than a barrel of monkeys and I strongly recommend catching them next time they’re in town for a night of manic dancing, wolf whistling and good times.
