Live Review: WAM Song Of The Year Awards 2013

One of the best things about WAM's award system is that it balances the democracy of mass approval against the cultural aristocracy of industry approval: on the one hand are the WAM Public Voted Awards, which provide an assay of popular taste (head to themusic.com.au to vote for them if you haven't already, yikes), while the Song Of The Year Awards are the first in several generalised awards determined by music industry consensus.

2013's Song Of The Year was hosted by the incandescent Tomas Ford – the man could convince water to run uphill. First cab off the proverbial music rank was Country, which went to Graphic Fiction Heroes for First And Last. School 14 Years & Under went to Emmanuel Navarro aka ENAV for Listen. Blues/Roots went to Jordan McRobbie for High Tide, Nick Abbey of Abbey | Foster | Falle scored the Jazz gong for Avina, Formidable Vegetable Sound System landed Folk for No Such Thing As Waste in a category that was markedly light – the absence of any content from Patient Little Sister's eponymous debut EP was unfortunate. The same was true of the Electronic award nominations, which had a Ta-Ku-sized hole – but WAM's Song Of The Year awards are drawn from public submissions, and fuck, it's totally cool that acts don't win what they don't submit. Rachel Gorman picked up the socially-conscious Mentally Healthy award for Hurting Bird. 7 Beats, Ananth scored the World award for The Endless Dance, the Heavy award went to Sleepfreak for Frankenstein, and Indigenous went to Jarred Wall of Jake & The Cowboys for Friends. Cycle~ 440 edged out arguable genre favourite Kucka to score the Experimental award for So We Beat On, Boats Against The Current, and Minute 36 picked up the Regional award for Three States.

Boom! Bap! Pow! scored the contextually appropriate onomatopoeia of the Pop award for their single, Suit, heading off Stillwater Giants' triple j-thrashed Fly Under The Radar (j-thrashed, hey, let's make that an adjective) and Rainy Day Women's baroque Temaze. Pop fielded a solid set of nominations, and frankly, it could have gone any which-way. The Rock award went to Perth titans Eleventh He Reaches London for Body Unbind, taken from their recently launched LP, Banhus. Post-hardcore veterans, Eleventh have been putting their shoulder to the wheel for over a decade now, and the vindication of a SOTY gong for arguably the night's second-most savagely contested category was tribute indeed - particularly considering the competition from Timothy Nelson & The Infidels and The Big Splash wunderkinds Apache was fierce.

I've saved the killer trio for last: Mathas and Abbe May cleaned up with an unprecedented trifecta for their collaboration, Nourishment, scoring awards for Electronic, Urban/Hip Hop and the overarching Song Of The Year Award itself. It was an ingenious pick; ten years ago it would have been inconceivable for the premiere West Australian songwriting award to go to homegrown hip hop, but we've changed, and that's a fantastic thing to be part of. Congratulations to all the WAM Song Of The Year nominees and winners, and best of luck in the upcoming Public Voted WAM Awards.