Project Description
. . La Dispute, Metro Theatre, city centre, Sydney, Australia / Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 19 August 2023 . . Wifecult, Metro Theatre, city centre, Sydney, Australia / Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 19 August 2023 . . Blind Girls, Metro Theatre, city centre, Sydney, Australia / Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 19 August 2023 . . Blind Girls, Metro Theatre, city centre, Sydney, Australia / Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 19 August 2023 . . La Dispute, Metro Theatre, city centre, Sydney, Australia / Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 19 August 2023 . . La Dispute, Metro Theatre, city centre, Sydney, Australia / Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 19 August 2023 . . La Dispute, Metro Theatre, city centre, Sydney, Australia / Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 19 August 2023 . . . La Dispute, Metro Theatre, city centre, Sydney, Australia / Photo: Alec Smart, Saturday 19 August 2023 . . . Photo Credit: gingerdope . CLICK THE PIC TO VIEW THE NEWS
.LA DISPUTE
+ Blind Girls + Wifecult
@ Metro Sydney
19th August 2023
(Live Review)Review and photos by Alec Smart (@alecsmart_fotos)
La Dispute, the American ‘post-hardcore’ 5-piece, performed at Metro Theatre in central Sydney on 19 August, with support from ‘screamo’ Gold Coast band, Blind Girls, and Brisbane-based emo trio Wifecult.
The event was billed as the tenth anniversary of La Dispute’s second album Wildlife, released October 2011, a breakout recording that defied song-writing conventions and became an international, critically-acclaimed best-seller. The album was performed in full throughout the seven-date Australian leg of the band’s world tour.
Wifecult launched the concert with a sonic wall of harmony. The trio’s most recent release, Hold It Down, from the Kindness in Clarity EP, was released in June 2023, and discusses dealing with depression – a familiar topic among fans of the often melancholic ‘emo’ genre.
This EP followed on from their debut album When All is Said and Done, released in August 2020 and is dominated by strong vocal harmonies and subtle guitar chimes.
Originally from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the band features La Dispute’s drummer Brad Vander Lugt. One wonders how he maintains involvement in two bands on different sides of the planet with rehearsing and touring commitments.
The tone of the night ramped up a notch with the arrival of Blind Girls, a female-fronted five-piece, who describe themselves as “Australia’s premier skramz band”.
For the unfamiliar, skramz is also known as ‘screamo’, which, in the early 1990s, merged the musical intensity of hardcore punk – fast, loud, minimalist – with the melodies and emotional emphasis of emo – characterised by variable tempos with lyrics focusing on the personal instead of the political – and resulted in a crescendo of wailing vocals and frequently dissonant guitar.
The word skramz evolved to signify bands that aligned with the earlier, rougher version of screamo (merging the words ‘scream’ and ‘emo’), not the latter, lighter, commercially-driven versions in the early 2000s that were more radio-friendly.
To this reviewer’s ears, Blind Girls vocals sounds like a baby with trapped wind shrieking to be burped, but I can appreciate the band’s musical dexterity, and vocalist Sharni Brouwer delivers with a passion that must surely test her powerful vocal chords.
The fans loved it though, with The Metro swelling to capacity as the audience filtered in to enjoy this sonic assault on their eardrums.
Formed in 2013, Blind Girls – 4/5 male and none of whom appear to have impaired vision – have several recordings in their catalogue. Their most recent album The Weight of Everything, released March 2022 was described by one reviewer described as “an engaging blend of dreamy skramz colliding with mathcore on week two of skipped meds.”
La Dispute, known for their distinctive minor chord melodies combined with complex, spoken (frequently shouted!) lyrics, have toured Australia at least five times. Their songs are an intricate marriage of melancholic tunes that vary between droning and experimental with lyrics that are narrative-driven essays.
The Wildlife album they featured this concert was composed as a series of short stories derived from concepts and life experiences, which the band then wrote tunes to match.
The band are named after a 1744 comedic play La Dispute, written by French playwright Pierre de Marivaux, which centres on four youths, two boys and two girls, raised separately in isolation, who are then released into an enclosed garden and observed by aristocrats.
The band’s vocalist, Jordan Dreyer, saw the play in high school and, according to Wikipedia, “felt parallels between the work and the music he was writing at the time.”
It’s a testament to La Dispute’s musical dexterity and unique vocal delivery that a band that is not easily categorised can fill a major venue like Metro Theatre in the city centre (capacity 1000).
Furthermore, despite the lack of singalong choruses, the audience often called out the words of the band’s better-known songs, especially King Park.
Arguably the stand-out track from Wildlife (although it wasn’t one of the two singles released to promote the album), the seven-minute melodrama, based on a real incident in the band’s home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan, deals with the aftermath of a drive-by shooting in which a child is accidentally killed.
The protagonist finds refuge in an apartment where he is pursued and surrounded by police. His uncle pleads with him to surrender while he contemplates aloud whether he can find redemption in suicide.
A heartrending composition, hearing a thousand voices chant “Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?” sent a chill down this reviewer’s spine.
Check out Alec Smart’s (@alecsmart_fotos) full gallery of this event HERE
Follow LA DISPUTE
BLIND GIRLS Bandcamp
WIFECULT Website
Press Release 27th April 2023 (below) HERE
LA DISPUTE
announce
WILDLIFE
10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY
AND RECITAL
Australian Tour
.Destroy All Lines & WME Agency Presents
LA DISPUTE
WILDLIFE
10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY
AND RECITAL
Australian Tour Dates:FRIDAY 18 AUGUST – PRINCESS THEATRE, BRISBANE (LIC AA)
SATURDAY 19 AUGUST – METRO THEATRE, SYDNEY (LIC AA)
SUNDAY 20 AUGUST – VENUE TBA, NEWCASTLE (18+)
TUESDAY 22 AUGUST – UC HUB, CANBERRA (18+)
THURSDAY 24 AUGUST – THE GOV, ADELAIDE (LIC AA)
FRIDAY 25 AUGUST – MAGNET HOUSE, PERTH (18+)
SUNDAY 27 AUGUST – FORUM THEATRE, MELBOURNE (18+)Tickets from destroyalllines.com
AMNPLIFY – DB
Photojournalist, Features Writer, Editor with 30 years experience. I specialise in live music photography [‘world’, punk, folk, ska] and news reportage.
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