Live Review: Rolling Blackouts, The Steve Miller Band

The Old Bar seems like a shoebox most Saturday evenings. Narrow and rectangular, it’s certainly a comfortable shoebox but a busy shoebox nonetheless. Packed to capacity, the Fitzroy bandroom brims with the smell of beer and whatever else it is you smell at pubs around the inner-north vicinity. The crowd lingers around coolly. They’re waiting for local darlings Rolling Blackouts. 

Preceding them though are The Steve Miller Band — SMB in short. Their frontman, Steve Miller (stage name “Handsome Steve”), is in a full pair of pants for once, a welcome substitute for the torn pieces of material that usually hang from his belt at shows. The Cats have won the footy, he announces. Miller and his young and fashionably coordinated bandmates chug out brazen rock’n’roll covers in tight formation, including Wreckless Eric’s Whole Wide World and The Everly Brothers’ The Price Of Love. Frontwoman Erykah Dunville’s (“The Dutchess”) husky vocals ride in force over the fast and steady guitar lines as drummer Phoebe Taylor (“The Shewolf”) employs just a kick, snare and tom to keep the primal beats running. They end with a single, a cover of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love?, and with that the rock’n’roll explosion is over. 

Rolling Blackouts’ steeze is far more subdued than the previous band. Twangy, lazed and for the most part jangly pop songs ooze throughout the room to the audience’s eased contentment. At times they abandon this for faster slices of the jangle-cake, but pop melody nonetheless lies at its crux. Fran Keaney’s jugular vocals conjure comparisons to those of Television’s Tom Verlaine; words are spat out with a deep, speech-like delivery. He shares vocal duties with fellow guitarists Tom Russo and Joe White, going back and forth, to and fro between singers. It’s a nice touch to the hour-long set, as is the inclusion of an acoustic guitar. They play singles including Clean Slate and Wide Eyes, and they look aptly relaxed while doing so despite their audience standing before them shoulder-to-shoulder. Their bassist Joe Russo is so relaxed, in fact, that he plays the entire set sitting against his amplifier. Their recent EP, Talk Tight, makes several entrances to the setlist, as well as new singles Career and Write Back, the latter a song written to lament the woes of online dating. As you do. 

By its close, Rolling Blackouts have championed simplicity. The Old Bar is left a happy little shoebox.