Live Review: Modern Baseball, Zzzounds

Zzzounds (the solo project of Milhouse's Dave Drayton) warmly greeted the buzzing, sold out crowd, and instantly a quiet fell over the room as Drayton's sweet, clean guitar chords, interspersed with intricate neck-tapping, set the tone. Drayton demonstrated a real knack for building mood and charmed the crowd by encouraging tender singalongs and joking about his nu-metal pun song titles (such as Centrelinkin Park) in between. The gorgeous open-tuning that provided so much mournful sweetness regrettably meant that every song was in the same key, and as such they began to bleed in together towards the end of the set. Still, Drayton established a melancholic undercurrent that led nicely into the headliners, and meant that the crowd were primed to let all that pent-up energy out.

Beloved Philadelphia pop-punk quartet Modern Baseball were forced to postpone their Australian tour plans in mid-2015 due to singer Brendan Lukens' struggles with depression and anxiety, and throughout the night, you could really feel how glad the band were to be finally making it up to their fanbase. As the opening chords of Fine, Great rang out, you could feel that energy being reciprocated by the crowd — instantly every hand in the room went up, fists pumping in the air and shouting along with every word. MoBo are a band who really nurture that connection, and their set felt much less like a band showing off what they can do than a great big party, to the degree that the one or two measly A4 "No Crowdsurfing" signs haphazardly Blu-Tacked up by venue staff felt like a tongue-in-cheek joke.

New singles Everyday and Apple Cider, I Don't Mind played back-to-back, forming the centrepiece of the set with heavy chugging guitars belying their tender subject matter. On closer I Think You Were In My Profile Picture Once, the band didn't even bother singing half the lyrics; the crowd was doing all the work for them.