Live Review: Alpine, Tiny Little Houses, Darts

Alpine's Christian O'Brien and Ryan Lamb stand among early punters watching Darts opening the sold-out Shot Fox single launch at Corner Hotel. Lead singer Ally Campbell-Smith's sweetly intense vocal amidst the garage-rock crashings on Aeroplane makes for compelling listening.

Tiny Little Houses cut brooding figures, singing their broken hearts out next. Lead singer and guitarist Caleb Karvountzis is quite captivating; he sings with his head down, keeps his eyes closed and channels a deeply melancholic vibe. Sweet track Soon We Won't Exist goes down beautifully before Karvountzis slings on an acoustic guitar for their self-declared "weird country song" Every Man Knows His Plague; And You Are Mine. Despite the creepy title, it's actually a hip-swinging winner with the ladies on the dancefloor. The party vibe continues with Easy, inspiring Karvountzis to flash his first smile of the night towards the cheering crowd. New EP title track You Tore Out My Heart promptly takes the pace right back to more familiar slow-burning heartache, but it's so raw, honest and beautiful that nobody minds at all.

Then boom, Alpine blow the lingering deep feels away with opening track Need Not Be, before co-lead singer Phoebe Baker suffers a shoe-related wardrobe malfunction in the very first minute. Flinging her boots off, she's let loose alongside co-lead singer Lou James to dance freely in all their babeing jump-suited glory. Foolish sets the dancefloor completely alight as the crowd rocks out in joy, celebrating all things shitty and #yuck about love. After the high-energy performance antics of Hands and Seeing Red, screaming punters are clearly shit-faced in love with the band without shame. Despite being utterly charismatic performers, Baker and James reveal themselves as cute-as dags deep down, as they fret about their melting eye make-up and question whether or not the crowd has eaten any bananas today. Guitarist Christian O'Brien handles all the twinkling subtle riffs beautifully on Come On, while the world's most gorgeous dancing bass player Ryan Lamb performs dangerous twirls on song-of-the-night Shot Fox. After confessing they keep forgetting the Gasoline lyrics, punters are happy to sing this winner loudly, giving Baker a little downtime to prowl about the stage on her hands and knees. An extended intense rock-out on Lovers 2 sparks a near riot before sexy as hell Damn Baby closes out this most magnificent set. So foolishly attracted to you Alpine, you #1 babes of Australian indie-pop.