Thursday 16 May 2013

Gaslight Anthem in Melbourne

Bearded hipsters rubbed shoulders with alpha male douchenozzles at The Gaslight Anthem's second of back-to-back shows at Melbourne's intimate Palace Theatre. Precise, powerful, passionate ... the band delivered as expected, eliciting howls of joy from a packed floor that would explode with pinwheeling limbs and footwear and shaggy beards during fast songs.

I'm old, yes, but hated crowd-surfers and violent moshers as a young man. Mollycoddled prep school boys and uni jock pricks seeking attention by smashing into others is as interesting as a shit I took last week. The band kept close watch on what was happening beneath and before them and seemed bemused by the wildness. This was my first Gaslight Anthem show so I can't say if this was typical audience behaviour. It's just so fucking selfish, and detracts from the action on stage. Sometimes this a good thing, but not when Brian Fallon and Gaslight Anthem are running through a flawless set of razor riffs and confessional vocals.


A fan flashes frontman Brian Fallon an appropriate hand gesture.


"Ain't supposed to die on a Saturday night ..."

Fallon enjoys a local fermented beverage.


"Have you seen my heart / have you seen how it bleeds ..."

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