The mood is vibing excitement for La Dispute's live recitation of their 2011 album 'Wildfire'.
Tonight (18 August) is the 10th anniversary tour of this album in Brisbane (The Princess Theatre). The fact La Dispute haven't played to us since 2018 has many fans super-hyped for this show.Our entrée and starters for the night are Sunny Coast's WIFECULT and Gold Coast's Blind Girls who also have many a punter drooling for their tunes. Blind Girls are becoming a favourite live act of mine and WIFECULT come with a high recommendation from a muso mate. I'm told their drummer may also be the headliner drummer – I guess we will find out.
Bang on time, WIFECULT are quick to get it going, kicking off the night with the melodious 'Something In The Air'. The vocal harmonies are lush, straight off the bat and the three-piece are tight, well-rehearsed and clearly deft instrumentalists.
WIFECULT - image © Clea-marie Thorne
Jarith Hughes (vocals, guitar), Joseph Keating (bass, vocals) and Bradley Vander Lugt (drums) are raising the energy onstage. Keating takes the lead on vocals on a song called 'Deadman' and it is delicious. The rhythm and lilt of the vocals blend and wash over you with the heavy emotion of the lyrics.
While tuning his guitar for the next song, Hughes tells us 'Seeing Double' is about checking yourself and reminds that while we all want to receive love, we need to remember to give it, even though it's sometimes hard and it can hurt. The crowd are absorbed and give their full attention.
A song that gives empathy to those experiencing mental health concerns, 'Hold It Down' is played before some new tunes from their latest EP 'Kindness In Clarity'. 'Rose' has punters heads bobbing on snaking necks as they soak in the ambience of the song, lapping up the instrumental groove.
WIFECULT - image © Clea-marie Thorne
Before the next song, Hughes confirms: "This is f...ing sick. It's my 30th birthday today. What a f...ing way to go." Vander Lugt, prepared for this next number, keeps a beat going as Keating then tells us that "as a gift to Hughes on his birthday, he can use one of his favourite words in this song tonight. It is not always an appropriate word, but I think it's appropriate tonight."
Chanting commences to the beat from voices in the crowd as Hughes waits for the right time to start singing us the lyrics to an absolute banger and gut wrencher 'Jasmine'. Many in the pit are sinking their teeth into this last morsel from Wifecult.
An electric energy of excitement of even more punters filling the venue is giving a buzz to the venue's ambiance during the short break. Punter enthusiasm is catching on.
Fans of Blind Girls, sporting big grins, are now inching closer to the darkened stage. We won't get much light on the artists before us. Blind Girls are known to keep the stage darkened as they play with occasional moments of lighting piercing the stage during their sets. Maybe it's deliberate to keep it moody as well as our focus on their music.
Blind Girls - image © Clea-marie Thorne
The crowd cheers as shadowy figures take their places. Roaring screams from the crowd are greeted with overpowering screams from vocalist Sharni Brouwer, plunging us into an atmosphere of heavy.
The set is kept pulsing by the immaculate drumming and bass grooves pierced by guitars, more screams and jolting stops and starts. Sh.t is hectic! With or without illumination, it's hard not to focus on anything but the spectacle before us! Punters are getting one thrashing set list.
The majority of songs I recognise are from the album 'Residue' including 'Breaths' and '3am'. Our minds are flaying like the hair on some headbangers who are sharing space with us. Two songs later and 'The Ghost In My Eye' is played sending us into another rapture of emotive release before 'Nightshade'.
These talented musicians are playing a slick set, leaving us with one last song and the remnants of a hardcore assault on our senses. The chests of Blind Girl fans in the mosh are visibly heaving. I suspect the interval is a blessing for them to catch their breath and hydrate before the onslaught of our headliners, La Dispute.
Blind Girls - image © Clea-marie Thorne
Alrighty, the stage is now home for more than an hour to the likes of Jordan Dreyer (vocals), Chad Sterenburg (guitar), Adam Vass (bass), Corey Stroffolino (guitar) and yep Vander Lugt (drums) – the current line-up of La Dispute who will be performing, in my opinion, their most harmonised and melodic album, 'Wildlife'.
Opening with track one from the album 'A Departure' there is an eruption of cheers, yowls and roars. The fans are relishing the reality of seeing their favourite band live.
This is followed by 'Harder Harmonies' with Dreyer whipping the mic cord around onstage like a stock whip. He also wastes no time getting up close and personal to fans on the barrier. 'St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church Blues' confirms the order of the night must be track for track.
Fans are very vocal tonight, yelling the words, screaming out to Dreyer and singing the minimal parts that are sung with their best screamo. The guitar solos are sending fans nuts and the drumming is faultless (to my untrained ear).
Participation is definitely high and only escalating as the energy continues to peak through 'Edit Your Hometown', 'A Letter', 'Safer In The Forest/Love Song For Poor Michigan', 'The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit', and 'A Poem'.
La Dispute - image © Clea-marie Thorne
The love between fans and the band shifts back and forth across the barrier pit. Dreyer is like the conduit that connects us all. He honestly spends so much time on the barrier interacting that it makes it such an intimate and communal experience.
A peak is definitely reached with 'King Park' a clear fan favourite. Punter voices are even louder than before. Fans are chiming in unison with Dreyer for this ballad of desolation, loss, despair and violence.
This album has a prominence of chord progressions rather than quirky and jolting time signatures. The many instrumental parts throughout the album are giving obvious emphasis through a tension that then carves a pathway connecting fans to the emotional pull of the spoken, scream-tainted lyrics of the songs.
Dreyer who hasn't stopped racing to and fro onstage or leaping out onto the barrier, does take a moment or two of stillness as he recounts to us the lyrics on the album, while written to tell the stories around them more than 12 years ago, still resonate with today's world.
A world rife with disconnect, corruption, greed and narrow-mindedness. He narrates his understanding of community that we're lost and clawing to get back along with the caring of nature and humans – something he believes is not at all considered by the rich elitist that thrive off our misery and seek to control us. Fans vocalise a loud agreement.
La Dispute - image © Clea-marie Thorne
To be honest, if I were in The Princess' big sister venue, The Tivoli, I would have sworn it could have been 2011-12 while La Dispute were performing their seminal album for us. That's not just nostalgia, it demonstrates just how fresh and connected La Dispute are to these songs, including 'Edward Benz, 27 Times', with a relevance of mental health issues in society, 'I See Everything', a kind of dirge for the death of a child that has a sense of urgency.
'A Broken Jar' and 'All Our Bruised Bodies And The Whole Heart Shrinks' created a continuing fervent frenzy in the crowd. More and more crowd surfers can be seen above the heads of punters.
Dreyer frequents the barrier to be with his fans. He is dangling the mic for them to scream into or thrusting it out further into the pit for others to join in the fun. The band has just got to be chuffed with the audience singing along to the whole album.
The band machina behind Dreyer are impeccable. They unforgivingly and flawlessly thrash our senses right up to the final song of the album. It's a song that echoes a glimmer of hope for a lost love, 'You And I In Unison'. It is unity that is definitely felt among the crowd tonight.
La Dispute - image © Clea-marie Thorne
Although their later music has taken on other dimensions and deepened peculiarities of the songwriting and instrumentation arrangements, and the world has moved on from the drama that inspired the album, Dreyer delivers the intensity of emotions in his scream-tainted spoken words as if he's still in that space and time.
The audience, feeling the despair and anger carried on the vibrating air, sing-along loudly in sympathy or with empathy and even scream-speak-singing the other parts. The joy of fans in the room is in such contrast to lyrical content that you could almost feel guilty at having such a good time.
This only adds to the swirl of varied emotions continuing throughout the encore (thank the universe for encores, right?) starting with the very poetic 'Andria' (from their debut album 'Somewhere At The Bottom Of The River Between Vega And Altair').
I'm certain many in the crowd are connecting with Dreyer during this song about failed long-distance relationships. You can almost sense the understanding from some fans ricochet back to Dreyer.
La Dispute - image © Clea-marie Thorne
'Woman (In Mirror)' is the second encore treat which is followed by one of the most dynamic and animated songs from the same album as the previous song ('Rooms Of The House') 'Hudsonville, MI 1956'. Fans around me are delaying any notion they may have had of an early exit and remain transfixed by this last song.
We are immersed in the experience and bathe in the juddering rhythms and audible tremors of this metaphorical cherry on top of the set list.
Tonight birthed an undeniable vivid connection between the band and the crowd till the end. La Dispute gave one of the most expressively intense shows I've seen all year. Self-styled experimental post-hardcore and nonconforming brilliance. La Dispute – don't go changing this magic musical formula.
More photos from the show.
