polaroids of androids

Devastations + Gareth Liddiard @ Annandale Hotel - 09/02/2008

Considering that a) I was incredibly hungover from this and; b) Devastations play, at times, some incredibly bleak music; I was surprised just how much of this show I spent with a great big fucking grin on my face. Devastations have their sound perfected and, even if I didn't already think that Yes, U was a great album, it would have been almost impossible to walk away from their show last Saturday without being impressed by the sheer precision of their performance alone.

Gareth Liddiard opened things up with an acoustic set that comprimised of unreleased solo tracks and re-jigged versions of songs by his band - The Drones. It was great to hear some of the more brutal Drones songs stripped back and reinvented. That said, it wasn't as engaging as it could have been as the lone voice and guitar struggled competing with the general chitter chatter of the punters.

As expected, Devastations' set mainly drew from their latest release with just a handful of some older favourites thrown in for the die hard fans. From start to finish - their show was almost completely flawless. The band often seeming as though they were one perfectly synchronised mechanical operation instead of three seperate entities. It wasn't like My Disco precision - but it was still pretty damn impressive to see such a cohesive unit bring incredibly engaging music together so well.

I highly recommend that, if you are heading to the Laneway Festival this year, then you make sure you get in early and catch these guys. They will be playing on Reiby Place stage at 1.35pm. We promise that you won't be disappointed.

As you can see in the photos below the band were sporting some incredibly cool el moustacheee action. At times it almost looked like three Freddy Mercury's were performing (not that kind of 'performing') in front of me. As distracting as it was, it still didn't kill the atmosphere of their show. I think that's a real testament to just how entertaining they really were.

All photos by Morning Bell.