Live Review: Dead Letter Circus

At the start of the night, when there was room to breathe on the dance floor, Motioner got us moving with a synth-washed rock set. Playing as a three-piece, the band impressed with frontman Rowan Cane's reverb-drenched vocals and cleverly arranged tunes.

The crowd had doubled in between sets, as it tends to do at Newtown Social Club, and people seemed to stand back a little. The magnetic energy of I Am Giant pulled them forward, closer and closer to Ryan Redman. The frontman commanded attention by singing verses in the middle of the crowd. Intense spells of unbroken eye contact between Redman and crowd members may or may not have gotten weird after, say, the one-minute mark. But the set was skillfully performed by a band who could have sold out a larger venue as headliners.

Newtown Social Club's maximum capacity isn't half as big as the crowd Dead Letter Circus can pull on their best day. The Aussie favourites, who have supported the likes of Muse without looking out of place, seemed to be easing their way back into the swing of things after a little while out of the touring sphere. But from the opening bars of Next In Line to their thumping closer One Step, they were swinging hard.

When this main act took the stage there was barely room to turn your head. Promoting their new single, a cohesively mixed and typically punchy effort, they grabbed tunes from their stellar first two albums as well as the forthcoming. It was the kind of club show heavy bands eat for breakfast. Small venue, big adoring crowd, energy being transferred back and forth between audience and performer. DLC performed like a well oiled machine, like they really wanted to nail this one, and they did.