Saturday 11 June at Jive
Review – Geoff Jenke
Photos – Robert McArthur
With tours cancelled for the last few years, fuzz-pop darlings, Screamfeeder put their heads down and wrote a load of new songs and have just released a new album in Five Rooms. It is 30 years since their debut album, Flour, and the band have been itching to be hitting stages around Australia again.
Adalita played a solo set, armed with only a guitar and wearing a flannelette shirt, looking every part Neil Young/grunge. In fact, her playing at times reminded me of some of Neil’s solo sounds. It must be hard playing solo, trying to be heard over a crowd intent on talking and drinking, but Adalita pulled it off with most of the audience hanging onto every word and chord.
She started with I Want your Love from the 2013 album All Day Venus. (Has it really been that long?) Next up came a Magic Dirt song in Gap, Adalita singing like an angel with a little bit of devil thrown in and playing guitar like a maestro. After the song she told us “What a wonderful place Jive is” and then tried to work out if she had played there before. The rest of the set were songs from her 2011 self-titled album and All Day Venus with a couple of newer song thrown into the mix. Closer Blue Sky sounded wonderful and she certainly had the audience on her side.
Screamfeeder hit the stage with Kellie Lloyd carrying a cup of tea, complete with teabag hanging out of the cup. Very Rock’N’Roll! The band fired up with Late to the Party off their latest album Five Rooms. A really nice, slow burning intro eventually exploding into Kellie’s vocals. Tim Stewart broke a guitar string during in the song, asking at the end “Does anyone have a spare string, or even a spare guitar?” A guitar was forthcoming from one of the support acts and the show continued with the opening track, Day Crew from the new album.
Songs came from the whole history of Screamfeeder. Around a Pole and Sushi Bowl from Burn Out Your Name, Bunny from Take You Apart, Stopless and Triple Hook from Rocks on the Soul, just a few of the songs played.
At one stage Kellie told us, “Honestly, this is the best show we have ever played”. Maybe there is some truth in it, well until they play their next show. The crowd went crazy for Dart and then Kellie announced, “This is the encore, we don’t usually do encores” before firing into new song Deidre. But it was Hi C’s that sent the audience crazy. Not quite mosh pit crazy, but very close.
For the final song Wrote You Off, Adalita joined the band on stage. For a song that apparently was only practiced during the soundcheck, it turned into the highlight of the evening. It was at this stage I realised what was missing from Adalita’s performance. A band.
A wonderful evening that made us all feeling like it was the 90’s again. Hopefully we will see another high energy performance from Screamfeeder soon. Also, Adalita with band in tow.
A thank you to Adelaide’s own 90’s trashy/pop/fuzzy band Rash for opening the evening. They gave us a wall of sound, which got larger as the night went on as more people took to the stage to play with them. I am sure they started with only three people on stage but ended up with six, including Kellie from Screamfeeder singing the final song.
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