Live Review: Title Fight, Paper Arms, Post Blue

With their effortless blend of grunge and shoegaze, Post Blue are an adequate support for Title Fight. Awash in guitar effects, they draw from a tried blueprint, particularly in vocal delivery, with each chorus being a single line or phrase repeated over again. On stage they come across as indifferent, but have a developing repertoire of songs to pull it off. 

Paper Arms sing straight from the Hot Water Music hymn book with their take on gravelly Gainesville punk. For all the fist pumps, singalong choruses and anti-Abbott rhetoric, their set, while polished, drags through 40 minutes and in the presence of a progressive band constantly pushing boundaries, parades the Adelaide band as stationary.

Title Fight’s music, while initially pigeon-holed as pop-punk, has steadily shifted tack with each release. Often aggressive and downbeat, but always emotional, their latest album, Hyperview, sees the American band who rode the post-hardcore wave of the start of the decade now head into shoegaze territory and significantly drop the tempo, but never the intensity. 

They begin with Murder Your Memory, the opening track to their 2015 album, as guitarist Jamie Rhoden takes lead vocals in a typically measured and seemingly detached nature. Before any comfort is eased into, the drench of reverb clears from the PA and bassist and lead vocalist Ned Russin takes over as they shift tack and play Shed, the blistering title track from their 2011 debut. 

The combination of singers, albums and therefore styles from which they draw is a constant throughout the night, with a symmetry that ties it all together and if anything, gives their songs a greater significance when contrasted against each other. It highlights the depth of their songwriting and creates a captivating live dynamic that keeps the audience forever guessing. As their perspectives and indeed influences have changed over time, there’s a fragility to the band that makes them seem vulnerable, but rather than a weakness, they channel it into something intrinsically captivating, both on record and particularly on stage.