Brisbane music stalwarts, Mexico City, open the evening with tracks from their long-awaited new release When the Day Goes Dark. Suicide Swans, local five-piece alt country/rock/blues outfit, then warm the gradually swelling and appreciative crowd before W.A. country/blues/swamp-rock troubadours The Kill Devil Hills take the stage. They are in town to showcase material from their new LP, In On Under Near Water and ease into their set with older track The Bends using guitar & violin interplay to build to a controlled crescendo. Changing the Weather creates layers of guitar feedback backed with tinkling keys to grow into a maelstrom only to be reined expertly to its delicate conclusion. 

The band launch into newer material - The Nets and Hydra. The former is well-polished while the latter is a raucous number, with drummer Todd Pickett providing a thunderous backdrop to Brendan Humphries vocals and Alex Archer’s manic, soaring violin. The band relax into Chinese Burns and set highlight Angry Town, reborn with a harder edge, its original incarnation brutalised and conclusion drawn out with an extended feedback-drenched guitar jam. 

Lion in the Pillar and We Belong Here In Space get a workout and I Wonder If She’s Thinking of Me grows into a cacophony of swirling layers of guitar and violin. Words from Batman to Robin has become a live mainstay while the band unveil new songs You Got All Your Good Things Stained and I Don’t Believe It Anymore to round out the set (the latter a stomping number with the viperous delivery suggestive of an unrecorded Drones track). 

Single track encore, Lucy On All Fours, is delivered in near a-Capella style with the vocals of Humphries and Pickett playfully intertwining. The Kill Devil Hills depart with a mastery of their craft in tow, having showed (once again) that they remain a live musical force which continues to grow and never fails to deliver. 

- Jay Beatson