A warm and inviting Transit Bar saw Canberra host Hancock Basement and youthful Sydney-siders Tom Ugly. With the audience streaming in, Transit Bar quickly filled with patrons excited to see Canberra’s premier band support, and comers Tom Ugly.
Hancock basement, well known to Canberra audiences after their Trackside appearance, leapt into their set energetically. Lead singer Nick Craven led from the front, gyrating and dancing the crowd into a typically mild-mannered Transit Bar frenzy.
Performing a mixture of old and new material, to be released on their new 7 inch vinyl, Hancock Basement reminded Canberra of the bands combination of raw energy and clever originality. Saving the best for last, guitarist and keyboardist Nick Beresford-Wylie, blew the saxophone in their emphatic final song ‘We Started Something.’ This small musical example highlighted Hancock Basement’s musical depth, showing both ingenuity and originality. It was an impressive set in the context of a pop/rock scene that is starting to sound depressingly homogeneous.
After Canberra stalwart’s Hancock Basement performed, it was the turn of Australia’s new Indie/Electronic sensation to grace the Transit stage. Tom Ugly (formerly known as ‘Is’) started the set strongly with a stripped down rock version of ‘Bad with Love’. However as the set continued, it became difficult to note either a change of feel and tempo, let alone a different chord progression in their music. Songs such as ‘Cult Romance’ seemed to suffer as the band failed to recreate the heavily synthesised recorded versions on stage. It felt as though a shine was lost from their recorded versions, as the band continued to wade through their set-list.
Saying this, the band is still young and shows potential to be a mainstay in Australia’s brittle music scene. Tom Ugly (lead singer of Tom Ugly) turned 18 at the Transit Bar last night, and as time progresses, so to will his music. One can only feel that Tom Ugly’s future lies more in an electronic sound, as opposed to the generic, run of the mill Indie/Rock they presented to Canberra audiences last night.
Tom Ugly would do well to note the originality and progressive sound of our own Hancock Basement. Whilst Tom Ugly on Triple J believed they ‘Sound Like’ Radiohead and Nirvana, Hancock Basement wittily wrote in their MySpace ‘Sounds like’ box – ‘Press Play’. But as American writer Herman Melville noted – “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
See who was caught OutInCanberra at Tom Ugly + Hancock Basement.
