Live Review: Baths, Collarbones, Rainbow Chan

It was a stellar line-up of outside-the-box electro pop at OAF on Friday. Rainbow Chan kicked off the night by dancing like nobody was watching and bringing her minimalist works to life on stage with a feisty energy, sense of humour and a beautiful otherworldly voice. Her best known single, Haircut – a song for “a woman who don't need no man!” she announced with a grin – was a thumping, bass-heavy joy of a song backed up by her partner in crime on drum machine as she manned the synth and the microphone.

If you're a Sydneysider and music lover and you haven't yet seen Collarbones, you need to change that situation stat. They're like a blend of the Pet Shop Boys and the Backstreet Boys in the best possible way.  The latter is largely thanks to both Travis Cook's '90s style and Marcus Whale's popping dance moves which broke the tension of emotional, rhythmically surprising tunes like Teenage Dream and stirring new tracks. “It's an honour,” he said, to be supporting Baths. “He's a trailblazer for the kind of music we play.”

Also known as Will Wiesenfeld, chillwave pioneer Baths is a little further left-of-field than his supports. He's a pretty normal-looking, bespectacled dude from LA with an astonishing falsetto, an incongruity that matches the often syncopated, unpredictable rhythms and samples laid out by him and his partner Morgan Greenwood, who also covers bass guitar. Oceans rippled and flowed on a screen behind them, occasionally groaning and echoing among the noise.

He opened begging us to “Swallow me alive” on Miasma Sky, from his third and latest album, 2013's Obisidian, before reverting to the jarring rhythm of 2010 track from his debut LP Cerulean, Lovely Bloodflow. He has an extraordinary physicality, especially on tracks like the fast-paced Plea, his body jerking feverishly in double time as he worries, “I've lost focus”.

Even more mesmerising than his falsetto – which at times reminds of Passion Pit's Michael Angelakos – was when it leapt to a guttural growl, as it did in a frenetic finale. “We don't really know what we're doing,” he told the crowd cheekily – but one thing was for sure: “There won't be any encores. We're not going to go off stage and pretend… that would be silly. We have exactly two songs left for you.”

It was an end of mixed feelings with the triumphant ringing pianos and earnest promises of You're My Excuse To Travel, followed by the emotional emptiness of No Eyes as he sang “This isn't the adulthood I thought I wrote.” An end that ultimately summarised Baths well: an expert in mixing the sweet with the unsettling.