Live Review: Black Cab, Lost Animal, The Infants

The Infants act as a precursor for what is to follow tonight. With sounds that are sparse, daunting, and sung from the pits of the throat, the youthful quartet serve the crowd a steely slab of industrial-rock and manage to keep it afloat. The only band to use guitars this evening, it's unsettling. Just as it should be.

Lost Animal is just frontman Jarrod Quarrell on this particular evening. He counts a MacBook and a synthesiser as his band tonight — mostly the former as he mopes about the stage with mic in hand. His first show as Lost Animal in a very long time, Quarrell's hair is shaggy and his turtleneck black. Comparisons to The Stone Roses' Ian Brown could be conjured if only Brown's own music were as melodic as this. Said computer churns out beats from Ex Tropical, Lost Animal's 2011 album of near-cultish local status, as deep vocals override on tracks like Lose The Baby and Greylands, as well as some newer ones too. The beats are coated with the strange sugary layer that they are on the album: alone, they're rigid — there's an industrial timbre to them that doesn't quite match the syrupy, galactic synth lines to which they're married. Opposites attract though, and the marriage is a healthy one: macabre and saccharine all at once. The only shame of it all is the usual conundrum of a one-man band — that with a little help from some friends, the sound could have been much bigger.

Not to worry though, because any expectation of a big wall of noise is fulfilled by Black Cab by the end of their first song. An interesting mix of patrons stand before the three-piece as they perform a set of songs taken mostly from their new-ish album Games Of The XXI Olympiad. There are older, longtime fans of the band whose hopes likely lay in a performance that includes their more subdued, kraut rock-ier works of the past, and then there are younger and more energetic patrons who stand right up the front — those who came to dance to intense, blaring electronica without having to suffer the trappings of a nightclub. The band are on point and the sound is mixed perfectly. James Lee's vocals slice cleanly through the tense electronic haze. Within the daunting and industrial procession of, well, everything, each part of the music distinguishes itself just as it was designed to do. It's a strong and fruity cocktail; it's as sweet as it is utterly intoxicating and it carries an inexplicable neon tinge, but then, it's easy to swallow and no amount seems like too much. An hour feels like half. Long songs feel short. A haunting fantasy.