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Me & The Grownups/ Cheer Advisory Council/ We Grow Up
Wednesday 15 July
The Promethean
The Promethean’s been hosting more gigs lately. Maybe it’ll take some getting used to, seeing bands at a Grote St. venue that isn’t the Metropolitan, but – and this is a big but – if even a few of the shows are half as good as this one, it’ll be a change worth making. Adelaide bands We Grow Up (albeit a pared-down version) and Cheer Advisory Council (not at all a pared-down version) perfectly complemented Melbourne’s Me & the Grownups, who brewed up a maelstrom of equal parts folk, cabaret, and nothing I’d heard before.
Being a local band – even if not precisely a struggling one – is no easy feat. Venues are played and replayed and gigs are often agreed to no more than a couple of days beforehand, often resulting in scheduling conflicts. So a mid-week gig with a reasonably high door charge may not have seemed a hugely tempting proposition for We Grow Up, who are currently recording their third album. These aforementioned schedule clashes were the reason they became a duo for the evening, songwriters Jon Mortimer and Anthony Golding playing a low-key acoustic set. Robbed somewhat of the full band’s distinctive poppy sound, the duo nevertheless put on a charming show, complete with Mortimer’s suitably awkward between-song banter. The highlight was their striking rendition of Celia, a tale of forbidden lesbian love from 2008’s ‘Night Kitchen’.
Next on the Promethean stage – formerly a church and an adult movie theatre (though not at the same time) – were the seven-piece (complete with bassoonist!) Cheer Advisory Council, fronted by local Renaissance man Ben Revi. The Cheer Advisory Council specialise in sombre, carefully-crafted love songs punctuated by Revi’s guitar surges. Given there are seven people in the band, the music is dense and atmospheric – it’s sometimes a challenge to single out an instrument from the wall of sound - but with a mix this good and a band this at ease, it’s made considerably easier. Soon-to-be single Switching Sides – currently sitting in a Californian studio – traded in some of the atmosphere for a more limber sound.
Taking the stage last, and looking the part (I always appreciate bands that value their look as part of an overall ‘package’), were Me & The Grownups, not showing any signs of fraying after almost two weeks of touring. I soon found much more to appreciate about them than the matching waistcoats of acoustic guitarist Adrian Sergovich and viola/ violinist Jonathan Dreyfus, as well. They were personally captivating, engaging the audience with amusing banter (and a hilarious America/ Poker Face melody), but it was their music that seems to exist within a different sphere. Difficult to classify but easy to recall, the symbiosis of the wonderfully gifted playing of Sergovich and Dreyfus with the utterly captivating singer and lyricist Anita Lester (who surely sent some hearts aflutter) was stunning. Jaws dropped. The trio, touring their third album, ‘Knowing Lovers, Naïve Lovers’, spun tales of love lost and gained with such fiery gusto, it was impossible to be unmoved. Well, not quite – I missed my last bus home, precisely because I was unmoved. Not that I minded.
Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo
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