Live Review: Steel Panther, Airborne

Margaret Court Arena

Sometimes a music reviewer needs to set aside their critical faculties and simply relay a series of events. Tonight’s performance by the satirical American hair metal band Steel Panther is one of those times. 

 

The four-piece opened their set with Goin' in the Backdoor and Tomorrow Night and played some of their best-known songs, All I Wanna Do Is Fuck (Myself Tonight), Poontang Boomerang, as well as their new single Never Too Late (To Get Some Pussy Tonight). Much of the set was given over to comedic commentary. Examples include Satchel’s statement, “The next pandemic is gonorrhoea, and it starts with this guy right here,” while pointing at singer Michael Starr, Starr’s impersonation of Ozzy Osbourne, bumbling around the stage and needing the Heimlich manoeuvre after choking on the head of a fake bat, drummer Stix Zadinia’s hapless shrug after Satchel’s disclosure of his erectile dysfunction and bassist Spyder’s role as the butt of jokes about being new to the band. Both songs and banter were appreciated by the crowd, and it is here that I feel the need to simply disclose facts. It’s how some members of the crowd showed their appreciation that could tie a pseudo-sociologist in knots. When one member of the crowd volunteers to personify Asian Hooker, the crowd cheers as Starr goes on his knees before her to sing, “sucky fucky smells like sushi”. Later, when another woman takes a seat on stage and Spyder’s plea, “I really really really really want to see those titties” is rewarded, it’s hard not to think about agency and who has what power in this situation. But she laughs, the band do their mock “OMG Boobies!” faces like the horny teenagers these guys in their fifties most definitely are not, the crowd cheers, and she nails the hook to one of Steel Panther’s more notable odes to anal sex, Weenie Ride.

 

After a solo set from Satchel in which he links dozens of iconic metal riffs in some kind of guitar shop employee nightmare, Starr invites dozens of women to the stage. Soon, they are in various stages of undress, and band members are struggling to express just how great they think the bouncing breasts suddenly surrounding them are that it becomes something approximating a sex-positive party. When some of those women start interacting, taking the show from a M to an R rating, and Starr says, “well, this is great, but I don’t see any vaginas”, and...cue vaginas, you can only imagine how horrified the venue’s namesake, noted arch-conservative Margaret Court would be, and laugh. Party Like Tomorrow is the End of the World, 17 Girls in a Row and Death to All But Metal are raucous anthems that give the band the chance to show how much musical and song writing talent lies under all the hair and makeup, but once the women leave, they really can’t be followed. They try, with an encore of Community Property and Gloryhole, but the energy levels drop and as they group together at the front of the stage, just for a moment, you can see just how much energy a show like this takes.

 

Energy levels are not a problem for the night’s opening act, local hard rock icons Airbourne. After spending most of the year overseas and with a rare opportunity to play a venue the size of their production, from the opening minutes, it was hard to think of this as anything except a headliner in full force. In front of their own massive flag, a wall of Marshall stacks, a busy light show, explosions of flames, sparks and dry ice and the songs to back all this up, this is hard rock theatre of the highest order. Singer Joel O'Keeffe has so much energy to share that to express it, he must simultaneously crowd surf while running Angus Young-style, play a guitar solo and open a can of beer by smashing it against his head. As black t-shirts and cans of Canadian Club fly through the air, it’s hard to imagine a sound bigger than O’Keeffe’s astonishing falsetto cresting over the band’s smashing cymbals and savaged guitars as they bring Breakin' Outta Hell to a deafening close. After asking the security to allow crowd surfing and tribute to Lemmy Kilmister, It’s All for Rock and Roll, O'Keeffe baptises us all in VB by throwing red cups of the stuff into the crowd, giving the extremely honed band a moment to catch their breath. The NWOBHM-heavy riffage of Runnin’ Wild sees the crowd lose it all over again, bringing the show to a shuddering, howling close. A triumph.

 

Live Review: Art of Fighting and Sally Seltmann

Melbourne Recital Centre

“This is such an aesthetically pleasing venue,” says Sally Seltmann, gazing around the honey-coloured interior of the Melbourne Recital Centre. “But it’s intimidating, and I’m such a clutz on stage,” she laughs. “But you should just be yourself, right?” 

Sally Seltmann is exactly who we want Sally Seltmann to be, and during her half-hour opening set we get an insight into her feelings; the risks that come with openness (Heart That’s Pounding), the joy of going to cafes alone (Table For One), uncertainty around devoting her life to music (Seed Of Doubt), how she wished she could write a book (Book Song) – something she later did – and heartfelt reassessments of the past (Night Bird and Please Louise), songs that wouldn’t sound out of place in either iteration of Heartbreak High.

 

Alone on stage with her Nord Electro 6 synthesiser and her phone from which she triggers sparse rhythm tracks, Seltmann somehow manages to interpret beautifully written and thoughtful songs, while at the same time being a goofball. “This is me folks!” she laughs after stopping a song for the second time because of a forgotten lyric. It feels churlish to say that these moments might be the highlights of a set that includes an overlooked masterpiece like Yes (“And I'll be in your car and driving / Straight through a red light / While you're running through my mind / Arrest me and say yes”), but they join us to her in the moment and amplify every other sentiment expressed. And when you have a personality like Seltmann’s, more is more.

 

After a brief interlude during which the venue quietly reaches capacity, Art Of Fighting arrive on stage for the hometown show of their Wires tour. The reception is warm, the acoustics perfect and as they commence playing their 2001 album, the backdrop behind them transforms into the first of a series of sketches of a cityscape, a different view of the album’s artwork. 

 

Art Of Fighting formed in the mid-1990s and released three albums and a handful of EPs before going on hiatus in 2007. In 2019, they returned with the album Luna Low, a release that seemed to fold the intervening years together. Like their previous albums, songs feature two dry Fender telecasters played by brothers Ollie and Miles Browne, Peggy Frew’s restless basslines and occasional hushed vocals and scattering flurries of Marty Brown’s drums. Spread this instrumentation across a song that sits at around 60bpm and apply the turn of the millenia tendency for a white male to sing beautifully in an alto vocal range you have the formula. That may sound reductive, but it’s what the band does with it that makes their music so compelling. Even 20 years on from Wires, the moment they begin it feels like a safe harbour.

 

Once the glacial pace of opening song Skeletons builds to Give Me Tonight and the crashing crescendo of Akula fades, Ollie fills the silence following another wave of applause and cheering. “We are Art Of Fighting,” he says bashfully. “We’re playing Wires. It’s been 20 years and that’s a long time. I was in the green room earlier and thinking, ‘Wow I can’t believe this album came out when I was five,’” he jokes, keeping his eyes on the floor in front of him. Frew’s warm smile subsides before he adds, “I’ll stick to the music.” The air thickened with dry ice and lights reaching out over the audience, played live Wires is revealed to be an almost monumental study in minimalism. With no guest vocalists, no string section arriving to leaven a chorus and only Miles’ occasional keyboard to flavour the sound, the band work together in a way that seems near telepathic. Part of the power of hearing this music in 2022 is its collaborative nature. With Covid-related restrictions pushing so many musicians to work with technology and so few bands having spent this much time playing together, the sense that this is music borne from hundreds of hours of rehearsals and recordings and concerts becomes almost tangible tonight.

 

Wires may be best known for beating albums by You Am I, Magic Dirt and Something For Kate at the 2001 ARIA Awards, in one of the most surprising upsets in their history, but these songs never feel like they are striving for anything. There is an effortlessness to every element, as if you’re being trusted with a confession. Ollie may tighten his face to sing a song like Just Say I’m Right, but it feels as though this is from inhabiting a memory, not because he is straining for a note.

 

After a standing ovation brings them back out for an encore of closing songs from other albums, Heart Translation and Luna Low, which may be the strongest song of the night, there is a sense of grace and restraint to even the loudest moments. Like there are depths yet to be plumbed. With music like this, there seems no reason Art Of Fighting can’t do this all over again in 30 years. Or sooner.