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Matt Langley - Lost Companions
Matt Langley - Lost Companions
Gig Guide
Friday November 21st
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· Empire Hotel: Hal's Teef
· The Backstage: Three Album Release! Onanon, Alpha State, Kitten Tank!
· Murphy's Irish Bar: Amanda Goodwin and Joe Setefano
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19 June, 2008
The Tweeks with local support - The Backstage 9/5/08
Page 2
The Tweeks with local support - The Backstage 9/5/08
Page 2
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Most of Dunedin should now at least be aware of what [The Tweeks] entail, slick and melodic guitar pop, well practised harmonies and plenty of la la las and oooh oooohs. Their very drive and competence puts them at odds with most of Dunedin’s musical milieu, who else has released two albums in the past two years and solidly toured not only New Zealand in the process? Most Dunedin acts seem content with playing shows to their friends and Dunedin’s limited musical community, releasing maybe an EP or album in the process, disappearing within two or three years with little legacy.
[The Tweeks] have ambition and choose to produce sumptuous guitar based pop music, clever and rich in it’s sound, if a little innocuous. Being a band that has come out of the Degree in Contemporary Rock Music they are well versed in all the aspects of what it must entail to be a professional band, although still do not seem too preoccupied with producing something deliberately aimed at gaining mass popularity. The gig tonight runs the gamut of their repertoire to date, that being from short upbeat pop songs, to the more midtempo rockers or slowburners. It is also apparent they do not intend to rest on their laurels or pander to expectations, they play only a couple of songs from the first album and intersperse the rest of the set with a mixture of material from the new album and yet unreleased works. Taking turns to sing lead and dressing each song with beautiful backing vocals they are certainly accessible and plausibly carry a wide appeal. The cleverness shows through in the arrangements and tempo changes that seem to mark every second song, sometimes too clever for their own good. The dancefloor has to contend with sudden bursts of straight ahead rhythms, sudden dropping out of the beat, just as sudden tempo changes and the odd hanging delay just to mix things up.
The only real difficulty I have with [The Tweeks] is that sometimes it all seems a little too safe, all the sharp edges have been meticulously smoothed out and the stage presence seems too desperate to be sincere that it appears insincere sometimes. A case in point is the cover of The Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love that ends their encore of covers (and manages to cut the stage power in the process). Where the original is obviously a huge glorious pop song at heart, the catchy lead guitar which sounds like it’s being played on high tensioned razor wire is simply there in The Tweeks’ version, the tension gone, replaced by technical ability.
The opening song of their encore is more appropriate, a cover of The Beatles’ Taxman, but before they reach that there is the closing number which features a brass section comprising members of
[The Retrophonic Funk Machine] and is both suitably rousing and engaging. All up the gig is a triumph, a worthy musical celebration and topped off by the shooting of confetti over the crowd. [The Tweeks] are certainly one of the hardest working bands to come out of Dunedin in recent years, and tonight give evidence of being a band with ability in excess and still more promise beyond the substantial amount (in Dunedin terms) they’ve already achieved.
By Dave Local
Posted by rob
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