Twerps, Melodie Nelson and Day Ravies in Bondi

Harriet Cheney headed to Bondi to check out Twerps:

The free Weds night gigs at the Beach Road Hotel are a baffling success. Usually I would hate the over boozed and over (or under) dressed students and backpackers. I would hate the crowds with bad band etiquette that you tend to get at free gigs and I would hate that the venue was overpacked. Now that I’ve painted myself as such a hater, I will disclose that there wasn’t anything that I hated about The Twerps Beach Road Hotel gig on Wednesday 12th September. In fact, everything down to the lack of rubbish banter between songs was great!

The shoegaze indie pop by Sydney 4-piece Day Ravies and the seductively pulsing tunes of Melodie Nelson perfectly set the scene and gathered the people for the infectious lo-fi punk of the Melbourne headliner Twerps. Refreshingly, they started bang on time at 11pm and from the first chord it was such a pleasure.

Twerps drummer Patrick O’Neill sat up the back of the stage with his red cap on looking like a big, super-cute school kid. Julia Macfarlane, guitarist and sometime singer was mesmerising as she sang The Guy in a simple but beautiful trance-like way. The mid-set crowd pleaser Dreamin had even the least interested pool players in the corner paying attention. By the time the band played the “ewwwws” of Coast to Coast, it was pretty clear that there was a lot of Twerps fans in the crowd. It wasn’t too packed and the relaxed setting of the pub meant the band was ultra-chill too, taking sips from their beers between, or even during songs.

Then, it was over. Only 45 minutes. Short. Sweet. Awesome. A little teaser before they take the stage on Friday 28th September at Sound Summit in Newcastle… something I won’t be missing out on.

Review by Harriet Cheney. Photo by Bobby Townsend at Twerps pervious gig at Goodgod, Sydney.