Live Review: Sticky Fingers

Dressed like they were expecting to play a backyard gig instead of sold out event, reggae-rock band Sticky Fingers cruise on stage. They sport Hawaiian shirts, bucket hats and a matching unkempt curls. With the strum of the first chord, a light show sends us all into a psychedelic craze. We learn that the majority of us are die-hard fans that are capable in belting out every single lyric. The rap-like verses of Australian Street are sung alarmingly precise for a disorderly audience, almost enough for frontman Dylan Frost to sit the song out entirely. As the band bounce their curly mops around like pom-poms, it’s blatantly obvious that Frost is enjoying a completely different wavelength of his own. ‘I reeeaaallly like Melbourne,’ he says with big googly eyes. In between slurred speech, he tells us we look ‘fucking luscious,’ and continues to demonstrate how many times he can incorporate the word fuck into a sentence. 

In between songs from their latest album, Frost plunges into the crowd and returns onstage without any pants. ‘It was you! You pulled my pants to fucking shreds!’ he giggles as he points out a section of the crowd. Basking in the uproar of wolf whistles, Frost smugly struts the stage, matching the nude antique statues of the Forum Theatre. A smiley tattoo jiggles on his left cheek as he brandishes a beer high in the air, the other hand failing to cover his regions. He’s hurried off stage with bassist Paddy Cornwall, leaving the rest of the band to potter on their instruments until their return. 

Continuing through the set, the band’s loose antics encourage the rest of the crowd to follow suit. Punters are inspired to to pull the tabs off $10 cans of booze and chuck them across the room like a grenade (all without even taking a sip). Others attempt to charge the mosh while carrying friends on their shoulders. Unfortunately, their double-decker balance is thrown off by the unnatural bending of the wooden floor, as we bounce to the chunky bass of Bootleg Rascal. Sure enough, if Sticky Fingers follow the same crazy shenanigans on the Splendour stage, everyone is in for a bloody good time.