Live Review: WAM Awards

Accompanying a rebranding of the premiere WA music industry body's big night, there was a definite sharpening of tone on previous years' West Australian Music Awards: Gone was the edible award of a “WAMington”, the ceremony was held at the auspicious (by Perth standards) Astor Theatre, and the kind-of playful “i” in WAMi has received a redundancy.

After a traditional welcome to the land from a local member of the Indigenous music community, San Cisco's Jordi Davieson opened with a three-song a cappella set. Stuck on a plinth without Scarlett's harmonising, Jordi's voice was a little shrill, but he could charm the legs off a table. First Craft Award out the chute was Best Folk Act (henceforth I'm just gonna write “X” instead of “Best X Act”), which went to a tied Mama Kin and Tim Nelson & The Infidels. Nelson was abroad, but the ubiquitous Hayley Jane subbed for him to pick up the award. Morgan Bain landed Blues and Roots, Bex Chilcott's Ruby Boots took Country Music. Graham Wood scored Jazz. Mama Kin then delivered a performance, starting with Redwood River and moving to One Too Many. After this she was joined by WAM Award winner Bex Chilcott and fellow Fremantle soul singer Lucy Peach for a supergroup take, unfortunately without a piano due to a stage malfunction. Bummer. Kin managed to improvise a song with a uke, with Peach and Chilcott in support.

Chainsaw Hookers beat The Decline and Scalphunter for Punk, in one of the night's most fiercely contested categories. Mathas won Urban. Michael Chugg, seated at his own table at the front, told some pricks up back who were making too much noise to “shut the fuck up”, which the pricks did. Kucka scored Experimental; Diger Rokwell won Electric; Karnivool landed Heavy; Rainy Day Women trumped San Cisco for the Pop award. The Love Junkies scored Rock, probably the biggest award considering the enduring legacy of a genre for many at the heart of popular music. Diger Rokwell then provided mid-evening entertainment, and was joined by Mathas and Abbe May to provide a run-through of Mathas' WAM Song Of The Year Awards-winning Nourishment. Rokwell also got stuck into triple j, a little.

Also – Dom Alessio and Lewi McKirdy hosted the Awards. Yeah, triple j supports WA, and triple j put gasoline in the engines of Tame Impala, San Cisco and Abbe May's national success. But Dom and Lewi were kinda awkward: to have the hosts forget to invite Bob Gordon on-stage when even Michael Chugg (i.e. super famous industry juggernaut) was bantering with Simon Collins made it clear the triple j hosts hadn't really done their homework. Dom and Lewi are probably great guys and maybe they're good as an impartial third party, but next year can we give locals a spin? 

Anyways, Luke “Rinnaz” Rinaldo won Best Management, Adam Trainer won Media Individual of the year, and themusic.com.au (PS, that's our website) won Music Website of the year. The Love Junkies won Breakthrough Act. Laneway won best event – 10,000 hipsters cheered ironically in unison. Andrew Ryan landed the Golden WAM award, fuck yeah. Ryan's a philanthropist and a gentleman and a scholar and he would brawl (intellectually) with anybody who tried to call him that, but he deserved it. As for the Public Voted Awards (distinct from the industry-voted Craft Awards), Tame Impala won basically everything a guitar-band can win: Best Video, Best Single, Best Album, Best Band. Abbe May won Best Solo Artist, and The Astor won Favourite Venue. The Love Junkies dropped a nuclear set to polish off the night, and I've busted my word count for this review, so basically that was it. Everybody got pissed in celebration. The end.