Rainy Day Women

Eclectic local Perth Indie popsters Rainy Day Women began their national ‘Friends’ tour on Friday 8th March at Amplifier, Perth and delivered a gold set of summery tunes. Known for its indie cliental there was an array of attendees for this group who have recently been hitting it up on Triple J and the Channel V indie charts.

Tones of low decibels launched the evening with the throaty vocals from Sam Joyce, lead vocalist of Place of Indigo. Tight pants potentially threatened the concord grind of this indie rock sensation delivering disputable harmonies but with vigour of ‘Kaleidoscope’ zeal, realistically not a bad collaboration of original tunes.

Jumping around stage like six year olds on excessive sugar, 44th sunset aim to walk against the crowd and fetch a quality of song writing perks with front man Nik Thompson. Gaining ample Triple J air time with ‘Ceaser’, this band performed above the belt of their underage persona.

The 80’s brought dance music frenzy to the industry, causing people to bop and hip thrust their way into pop. Bastian’s Happy Flight draws their sound from this era and injects it into a subculture that inevitably loves to swing along the beat. Dance electronic music exudes from five fella’s furnishing a hollow room with authentic boogie through synth and samples that most often would be played direct from a laptop, but these lads play all their effects live. These sly dapper men are golden gooses laying eggs only to be cracked by the soul searching freethinkers; they are tipped to soar into the national scene after the release of their upcoming EP.

A congregation had assembled for the first national tour of Rainy Day Women, young enthusiastic groupies lined the first few rows hoping to catch the eye of any of the dashing lads. Opening on ‘Strangers’ from their latest EP ‘Friends’, RDW seemed humbled to be performing to such a crowd after being thrust into the spotlight so rapidly in the past year.

Dylan Ollivierre sung through his cute dimple smile, falsetto based lyrics of love, loss and loneliness. A budding songwriter, Ollivierre writes truthfully, wittingly and relationally with lyrics such as “please don’t leave me alone”, from ‘My Poor Mind’ and “I never be alone like I am” from ‘Strangers.’ Lyrics are only one element contributing to the greatness of RDW, Daniel Henry lays some sweet hits as he locks in with grooving bass player Thomas Allison.

Simply amazing layering of harmonious backup vocals added significant talent to the breezy ditties including crowd favourite ‘Aimee’. A cream Fender Stratocaster cradled by Ross Pickersgill was the chosen weapon to stream vintage leads to the enthusiastic punters who bopped away to ‘Sunshine’ which featured a stellar instrumental interlude at the end of the song.

Shoeless, dressed in flannel and enjoying his birthday Allison’s solid whistling in ‘Runaway’ had the impressed crowd invigorated by the strength and pitch of a good blow.

‘Friends’ their current single livened the crowd towards the end of the set, featuring a random character dancing away like a tipsy girl on stage.

Closing on 2012 WAM Song of the Year ‘Sleigh Bed’, the winning number shows off the smooth rut bass and the strumming clarity of a well played guitar. Unexpectedly the excitement of the song seemed liked an invitation for 30 people to join RDW on stage and invade their musical haven. It became apparently difficult to perform the song with twits bumping into microphones, standing on laptops and getting in the way; although it was thoroughly entertaining to watch.

Easy listening and developed sounds were noted since their first EP release however use some cascading catchy hooks for guitar leads like in ‘Sleigh Beds’ wouldn’t go amiss.

Rainy Day Women continue their national tour around Australia before returning to Perth to support numerous acts including Battleships, Hungry Kids of Hungry and The Griswolds.