Dan Deacon / Beaches / High Places / Lawrence Arabia / Mark Barrage

Andy J Ryan Apr 25, 2023

The penultimate night of the season saw members of the Mistletone music stable lay some Summer Tones on Sydney.

Mark Barrage opened the night and shuffled his was amiably between his two noise-making gadgets making a cheery go of his chipper jerky electro-hip-pop.
Lawrence Arabia try to fool you with their earnest lankiness, jeans & Ts, tousled hair and affable front. They even slide in some particularly confectionate four-part ooh ooh ooohing and aah aah aaahing and harmonies galore. But they aren’t really all that sweet, fey and innocent, they’ve like y’know, scored. And a fair few times at that I’d say. Head singer-songwriter James Milne certainly isn’t one of those melancholically wistful, longing observers of life and love, he’s been right in the thick of it and isn’t shy to sing about it. Whether the chanting chorus of ‘Making love, making love, making love’ or the cheeky honesty of Beautiful Young Crew’s “We love each other, we hate each other we’re afraid of each other, because we want to screw each other” it was all a bit saucy really, and brilliantly entertaining.
High Places were a sharp looking boy & girl coupling that conjured sounds from an overly-strained desk brimming with electronic trinkets. There was a prominent cruisy steel drum sound that reminded of a Sunday market and a bounding beat banged out on electric drum pads that kept things bouncing along.
Beaches shimmied in with their four guitars and five fringes and just set the factory floor alight with their big sludgey riffs and strings afire. Just ace and also a perfect introduction to the experience that is seeing Dan Deacon.
You don’t just passively observe a Dan Deacon show, you are right thick in the middle of it. Taking the traditional focus away from the stage, Deacon rolls out his music making gear into the middle of the floor and has the audience surround him. His console resembles a ‘red light special’ trolley, but instead of the red light proffering short-lasting bargains is topped with a strobing, glowing skull of awesomeness that flashes out in time with the crazy beats. We are ordered to blindly bounce about the room with our arms out, pass on our positivity through the heads of nearby strangers and even form a tunnel through which the whole crowd and Deacon himself would dance until it extended right through the venue and up out to Oxford Street.