Live Review: Hockey Dad, Tiny Little Houses, TOTTY

First to open up at HQ gig were TOTTY. Fun and grungy, the band are clearly a group of friends making music together and seemed super stoked to be performing. A highlight was their last song of the night, which was about the minor inconveniences in life (socks that fall down in your shoe and you can’t pull them up, etc). The guitarist preferred to face his band and play for them, keeping the rhythm and tone of a garage band just playing for their mates. 

Four-piece band Tiny Little Houses took over the stage. The crowd loved them. The sound quality for vocals was fine, but the lyrics sounded a little garbled in the mix, which is important for Tiny Little Houses. The album isolates the uniqueness of the lead vocalist Caleb Karvountzis' sound and it's a shame that it was a bit warped live. Despite this, Tiny Little Houses really had the crowd going with a baby mosh pit kicking off at the front of the nightclub venue.

When the band moved into Team Player they adopted an interesting stage presence. The crowd was definitely there to party and it showed when the band began to play a slower song. The audience didn’t want to stop moshing and started a sad circle of death, or at least tried to. The mood picked up when they pulled out the millennial melancholy of Entitled Generation - an absolute banger.

Hockey Dad were listed to start at 10pm on the setlist, but that didn’t stop the crowd chanting madly for them when they thought they had waited too long. The excitement for a party was in the air. By the time the lads came out, the crowd was getting rowdy and they were hungry for Hockey Dad. Hockey Dad play like a local garage band with better sound quality. Noting the all ages gig, the boys in the band urged the crowd to mosh safely and transitioned into their next song. The crowd knew all the words, and one guy even knew the (air) guitar riff.

The band killed on their older stuff but it was really the new stuff off of their hit album Blend Inn that the crowd was into. Hockey Dad doled out their great local sound and it felt like an album made for friends.

Join The Club was the anthem for the night - there wasn't a soul that didn't know the words to the chorus. 

Busting out a cover of Alright by Supergrass and closing on the banger Homely Feeling, Hockey Dad left the stage to more chants of, “One more song!” Vocalist and guitarist Zach Stephenson and drummer/vocalist Billy Fleming obliged and played those 'more songs' that included Sweet Release. 

Catch Hockey Dad, TOTTY and Tiny Little Houses as soon as you can.