Live Review: Party Party Partay - Pirie & Co Social Club

Selling out well before doors opened, Party Party Partay – a reference to the headliners’ first record – was set to be one of the best gigs of 2014, with bands from all around the country flying in to ‘partay’.

It was the second time Stranger Things Have Happened had hit the stage, but they looked like they’d been at it for years. It was also evident they enjoy it up there, dancing like nobody was watching.

All the way from Perth, Being Beta seemed so excited and thankful to be playing that one song in they had pulled everyone close. Everyone was dancing away and if you’d just walked in you could have sworn that they were the headliners by the number of people up front having fun.

Sydney’s Ebolagoldfish followed with the same amount of participation from the audience as Being Beta. Having that experience as a band helped to turn it up, playing beautifully together.

Sincerely, Grizzly have a very expressive way of playing, having that slight scream in the vocals that still fits in with the indie-rock songs. The band seemed to have a slightly different sound to the other bands but it still fitted and helped to keep the bill interesting.

It’s always unfortunate when you have issues with gear before you even start playing but Foxtrot took it in their stride and just worked through it. One song in and no one cared about the technical difficulties because of the excellent stage presence that comes with solid punk songs.

The Hard Aches had a lot of fans that knew the songs word for word and showed it at every opportunity. The man responsible for pulling together such a great night, vocalist Ben David had the crowd eating out of his hand.

Recently off their second UK tour, Paper Arms graced the stage and you can see why they have such a following overseas. Well written songs with great lyrics perfect for group chants, an example being Lock Me In, where the crowd took a microphone to join in.

Hightime turned the night from a rock show into utter madness in the best possible way. Crowdsurfing and some onstage dancing between a fan and the lead singer were just some of the things that this set had. Clearly having fun is something this band really likes to do. The crowd seemed to follow the same motto, doing pretty much whatever they wanted while still looking at their fellow friends.

Changing into his space tights on stage, The Bennies vocalist Anty Horgan, with a smile from ear to ear, was ready to party and so was everyone else in that room. You could easily tell it was sold out; there was no room to move unless you jumped on top of people. From the first note you could understand why: they had such energy and enjoyment playing their reggae-punk tunes and this resulted in everyone feeding off this enjoyment. There was no doubt by the end of the last song everyone would shout for an encore; what wasn’t expected is that there was a song request and because The Bennies are crowd-pleasers, they finished the night with the requested song, Bag Of Weed.