Brisbane’s Ball Park Music are the most awkward bunch of nerds I have ever seen. The band use this to their advantage, with front man Sam Cromack owning the stage, flailing his skeletal limbs around in a very amusing fashion. Their live show is as fun as their studio work, with the six piece really getting into it and giving the performance their all. Their laid back presence and jovial nature made for a very enjoyable performance.
Ball Park Music played a tight set that was highly engaging, with Cromack and Jennifer Boyce constantly stopping to chat with the crowd and encouraging them ‘not to kill people, masturbate instead’. Highlights of the show were the ever hilarious “Sad Rude Future Dude”, and a killer cover of Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger”. The only downside is that the band seemed to be trying a bit too hard to be ‘cool nerds’ and their constant need to remind the audience of their ‘geek chic’ grew old rather quickly.
Cromack decided to finish the night with a bang, encouraging everyone present to ‘fucking party’ and danced all over the tables at the front of the band room as they played their last song “iFly” and walked off stage to a massive round of applause.
Guineafowl are a remarkably tight live act who took themselves rather seriously as they played through a quick, clean set of their soaring, anthemic pop. The tracks from their debut EP Hello Anxiety were all flawlessly executed. While the sound was great, the band themselves didn’t interact with the crowd, nor did they have much in the way of an engaging presence. They seemed to be concentrating very hard on letting the music do the talking, which seemed to appease the majority of punters who remained to watch their set.
However I personally find that their music suffers from the glossy over production. Guineafowl seem to be one of the many ’made for Triple J bands’, who’ve gotten label representation that have polished and packaged their sound ready for mass consumption and unfortunately taken away the personality which made that music so great to begin with.
I found the overall sameness and blandness of their recorded work seemed to wend it’s way into their live show, and while they are talented musician’s who play very well, their was just something missing, the performance seemed devoid of charisma and for those reasons I found Guineafowl to be underwhelming live. They played a solid set that was good, but by no means great.
