Live Review: Sonny & The Sunsets

Given his background loitering at the intersection of art and music it's entirely appropriate that San Franciscan identity Sonny Smith is playing his first ever Brisbane show with his garage outfit Sonny & The Sunsets at QAG's California Design Up Late exhibition, and a large and sartorially elegant crowd is on hand as he kicks off with the cruisy surf-tinged I See The Void. The unflappable Smith shrugs off early sound issues with a smile as part of playing “in a visual art space” and keeps plugging away, the sound soon rectified and sounding great as he leads his four-piece band through numbers like Palm Reader and the tender Girl Of The Streets (introduced as a “real Californian true story about the whole band falling in love with a prostitute and killing a pimp”). There's a real Jonathan Richman-esque innocence to Smith's demeanour and purity of expression seems paramount, especially endearing when he drops his guitar and dances barefoot into the crowd during Planet Of Women, returning to the stage without a hitch for the sultry Death Cream. At times even the band's din can't penetrate the chat from people who clearly have no respect for any aesthetic that they don't deem highbrow, but that's okay, The Sunsets carry on with little fuss and songs like the hook-ridden Too Young To Burn and the offbeat Mondrian save the day. They bring out the big guns for the finale, the storming Teen Age Thugs and the resigned but insistent Strange Love leading into an old school '50s-vibed instrumental stab which finished off a great set from this ragtag but delightfully enigmatic outfit.