Josh Pyke

In keeping with my tradition of timely reviews, I'm just getting around to writing about Josh Pyke from last Friday night.

Another Metro gig - love those gigs.

Due to badly timed doctor's appointments and my day from hell, we missed the first support act and only saw a few songs from Cloud Control. They weren't bad - fluffy pop with a keyboardist looking like a wood sprite skipping about in green tights and a brown smock. Death Cloud is sufficiently catchy that I remembered it from its airplay before I saw them. I also recognised Vintage Books when they played it.

We watched these guys standing behind a middle aged couple with two teenage girls. It was a distinctly bi-modally distributed crowd - with a pronounced lull between 25 and 40 years of age. It was accompanied by an excessive level of kanoodling in the upper peak of the distribution. Not your standard crowd is all I'm saying.

We moved for Josh Pyke so we could watch him instead of some low level groping, which put us way up the back, but with a clear line of sight.

I can't imagine how anyone could not like Josh Pyke. I mean, I get that you mightn't find that his music rocks your world, but live, the music is fun, the crowd knows all the words and he is so chuffed that everyone came out to see him you have to buy in. I knew all the singles and they were great. They were about half of the show, and of the others, there was a selection of darker, bassier tracks that I loved the sound of. I might have to get around to actually buying an album. He's been on the list for a while, but CD shopping rarely makes it into the diary.

The Lighthouse Song was a great moment for Australian choral singing. It's a lovely, lilting tune with pretty lyrics of the "together we can ignore the world and be happy" variety. The chorus also ends with:

And though our doors may knock and rattle in the wind
I'll just hold you tight and we'll not let those fuckers in

Up until this song, the audience had been vaguely tuneful. But I laughed every single time he sung those last four words and the crowd screamed it out with a gusto that AC/DC would envy.

For a really, spectacularly shitty day, it was the perfect anti-dote. His music is relentlessly cheerful (even the darker tracks have cheerful lyrics). He loves his girlfriend. People are fallible but lovable in his songs. If he comes your way, go see him. Worst case scenario, you too can laugh at the audience.