Live Review: The Big Splash Grand Final

Firstly, I think band competitions can be great animating forces, like skinny dipping or joining the Greens.

Pressure makes Diamonds. It means waking up, pouring a cold bucket of Hobbesian competition over your head, and realizing that you’re never going to be able to please everybody, unless you can – in which case, you’ve got to master your raw tools sharpish. It’s as much about self-knowledge as knowledge of your audience (with a bit of branch stacking to boot). The Big Splash is a long road paved with good intentions, which is its chief asset and its largest burden. In terms of the lineup, this edition’s final was reassuring proof that the world remains safe for dudes who play guitars across whatever stripe of post - 64 rock music - a whole topic in itself -- but there are deeper questions that remain to be explored. If you read a review to find out whether people had a good time and the music was good, it was a good night. Sure! But in a climate where arts funding is increasingly becoming the prerogative of dusty and arcane motives (holla George Brandis), band competitions inevitably take on dimensions they aren’t seeking. To whom do we direct scarce resources, and why? 

Would they all spend 10k well? Yep, and very differently. Jacob Diamond played the kind of superbly melodic and technically shining melange of ‘00s radio pop rock and Jeff Buckley that is a born winner wherever it crackles over an airwave. The amorphism of post-capitalist pop music means he could touch down anywhere worldwide and register the same swoons. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets play a kind of psychedelic, amped-up Esperanto, with bluesy riffs, vague expectorations about existential crises and Being Better, and beyond the riffage, an almost total lack of depth. Shit Narnia played blisteringly through their politically charged post-emo but it was tentative at points - when you thought they might really rip and engage with the scrum at front and centre, they demurred. Still, the frenzied group at centre stage calling for an encore (prompting Hugh Manning to come out and literally cover their mouths). High Learys are enduringly, brilliantly competent. They remain exactly the best band at what they do in Perth, and maybe the country. 

Anyway, brass tacks. The problem with a band competition like this one – a field firstly narrowed to 32 bands, and then a surfeit of wildcards, supplementary awards, etc., is that by the time the final rolls around, everyone really is a deserving winner. In the argot of these things, all four drew a big crowd, confidently played sets of original material, and carried a sense of je ne sais quoi, etc. The idea you can quantify perception into something concrete that is always going to fall short, especially with prize-giving. What it all comes down to is who’ll carry the flag for what criteria, and in a choice between ‘60s revivalism, gonzo psych, Issues Punk and classically trained songwriting, the latter won out. On the night, could you have been able to tell precisely why? As the crowd milled in and out awaiting the final judgement, it was hard to avoid feeling the yawning gap of the central problem of entertainment open up -- what does giving the people what they want actually mean? How and what, and to whom? If the question is ‘how many,’ Jacob Diamond was a worthy winner. He is well and truly the finished article, and if 10k can grease his transition into a self-sustaining entity, it’s money well spent. If the question was ‘what’, maybe Shit Narnia - what they do is Important in a way no other band in the comp had. If it was a question of technical perfection, you’d be hard pressed between the Learys and Diamond. As it is, the Learys are too good to not keep ploughing their furrow deeper, Shit Narnia belong in a different economy, and the Crumpets are just beginning their arc. But for everyone now, Google ‘DCA grants’, and open a word document. Dream big, and keep dreaming, but dream real – who are you dreaming for?