Live Review: Moses Gunn Collective, Noire, Top Lip

Let's just start by saying that rock music sounds damn good in the gig room at Plan B Small Club — right up there with the best in Sydney; the Opera House has been having some weird speaker issues of late and Factory/Metro/Enmore are all adequate without being impressive. When you add some really impassioned, talented bands to the mix, you're either going to have a good time or you're a bad person.

Top Lip and Noire were both champions of washed out melancholy; Top Lip were decisively rockier, while Noire lead singer Jessica Mincher's dreamy vocals reached the heights — on a mood-setting level — of acts like Beach House and Mazzy Star.

The Moses Gunn Collective had the crowd in the palm of their sweaty psych-rock hands from the get-go. It's unclear how many of the fairly packed house were family and friends, but they all certainly acted like they'd had a few wild nights out with the group. That could've just been because they nailed it though; everything from the sequin-tinged outfits to the 'nobody's watching' dance moves were in fine form. Bella Carroll earned herself Best In Show with dance moves so flamboyant that it's almost advisable she upgrades to a keytar to give her body a bit more freedom to do its thing — the fact that she had to reach over to hit keys at regular intervals turned out to be a real Milhouse for her dance routine.

From a purely sonic perspective, the tunes that kept a bit more of a cohesive song structure (like the brilliant Shalala) had the biggest impact, yet in terms of keeping the party atmosphere alive, the wildest, most discordant tracks had the shirts-tucked-into-acid-wash jeans crowd gurning away. In a live room this vibrant, and with the crowd so locked-in, the band could've shit in their hands and clapped and it would've been a good night.