polaroids of androids

Youth Group, Hit The Switch and no photos that can verify any of these things

Ok, quickly!!! With lack of photos this will have to be short - because everyone knows how much you prefer 'imagery'...

It all started with Youth Group's show at The Factory. I think there are three types of people in the town of Sydney - those that only know Youth Group because of 'Forever Young', those that have watched them from 7km away at a festival and 'somehow' not felt engaged and those that have seen them play impressive live shows in a whole variety of large and small venues. Now being somewhat veterans of the Sydney live scene, their show is a well oiled machine of delicately crafted and well thoughtout songs. I, unfortunately, got there too late and missed Belles Will Ring, but from all reports, a few drunkens, they were amazing. Youth Group held the audience in the palm of their hands for the entire duration of the show. Pretty much guraranteed enjoyment.

I have always wondered how a town like Newtown can continually produce a large number of high quality bands (or at least be their place of residence) and still not have a consistently good live venue. On Saturday I was fortunate enough to uncover a bit of hidden gem. The function room above the Newtown Hotel is a fantastic little space, complete with air hockey tables, pinball machines and girls in cages. The night was put on my the people of Hit The Switch and it was great to amongst a non-pretentious, almost house party like environment with people dancing around to dj's as they spun old swing records and the occasional modern day indie anthem.

I was mainly there to see The Straight Arrows perform (I jibbered a lot about them last week.. and yeah I don't care if they are a bit of an inside joke .. I can't get enough) and the setup was perfect for their trashy rock style, positioned inside a small room, nestled between pinball machines. They put on another fantastic performance, full of friendly crowd banter and noise. The crowd was a friendly bunch, with, as mentioned, very few of the look-at-me types that you get in the city 'indie clubs'. People were there to have a good time and didn't care how they looked and what people thought, great to see in a city which is often lost in it's own thoughts of self importance. I really hope the venue starts to put on more events like this (that said, the Hit The Switch thing is going to happen at the end of every month - more info at their MySpace page). The Straight Arrows also hinted that they would be played there again next month, hopefully that becomes a regular thing as well.