Live Review: Cottontail & The Supper Club

At Fringe Festival 2014, Cottontail Trio & The Supper Club performed as the Swing Review in the Spiegeltent. Fast-forward a few months and what a difference a larger venue and a demographically changed audience make.

During their Fringe performance, this young swing band from the hills of Perth was lauded with praise and adulation. Playing in this format for only a couple of years you can tell they've practiced and then repeated the process over and over again until they had their sets down pat.

No different this time at the larger Fly By Night Club. Both sets were impeccable and the Cottontail Trio's harmonies shone like a nearby stellar formation. The band – The Supper Club – made up of the horns: clarinet, trumpet and saxophone, and rhythm section: upright bass, acoustic guitar and drums – were world class. The marriage between the band and the vocals were pitch perfect. Each and every new song was as slick as the previous one.

However, parts of the show were somewhat flat. It lacked the zip and energy from the Fringe shows. Same band, similar performance, so why the lack of vibe? The group performed to a much younger crowd at the Fringe and seemed to have a lot more fun with them. That playfulness transferred to a more enjoyable experience as garnered from the crowd reaction. The Spiegeltent, a smaller, more intimate venue, also seemed to make the band react on a more personal level to their fans.
In contrast, the band was lost before the sell-out crowd and larger venue – they had to work hard to make a connection. Unlike the Fringe fans, this audience seemed quite passive and were not giving the band anything to work off – a tough audience. But what did the punters think? Paradoxically they were unanimous in their praise for the performance – people were in raptures. Go figure?

In these larger gigs, the band needs a crowd-warmer prior to their own show and more theatrics on stage (and off) to get a shy audience onside. There's no question this young group has oodles of talent and will go on to bigger and better things, but they need to find the electric energy they had at the Fringe Festival for every one of their future performances – after all, it is swing, which by definition means exuberant energy.