Live Review: Lower Plenty, Sweet Whirl, Mirage

The all-woman three-piece currently known as Mirage is so new they haven't quite settled on a name yet. As Bar Open's band room starts to fill, they premiere a bracket of songs in noisy, unrelenting four-four time — two guitars, drums and three voices often working in unison. It's raw and unassuming, and infectious enough to suggest that the trio is worth paying attention to as their sound and repertoire ripen.

Sweet Whirl (aka one-woman mood machine Esther Edquist) on the other hand demands attention from the moment she strikes her first note. She pours out a thick dark sap of bass (at times pedal-bent into strange and trippy new shapes) and overlays it with a voice that is half mumble and half sigh, but which is also wholly, deeply insistent. Edquist's narrative-driven lyrics are laced with shadows, both literal and tonal, to the extent that a song about small talk takes on a Kafkaesque aura of existential dread. It's an enthralling set, the only disappointment being that she runs out of songs before she runs out of time.

Lower Plenty step into the spotlight and treat the warm and friendly crowd to a selection of songs from their 2012 LP Hard Rubbish and 2014 follow-up Life/Thrills, along with a clutch of new numbers. The quartet of Daniel Twomey on drums, Sarah Heyward on percussion and vocals, and Jensen Tjhung and Al Montfort on duelling acoustic guitars and vocals are in fine form, effortlessly jangling their way through the crowd-pleasing set. Their singular style has been described as "suburban country" — it's a pleasurable-but-angsty sound seemingly custom built for this oddly disjointed band room.Tjhung lets loose with a seriously drunken country drawl and some lovely, jangly lead guitar work on the title track from Life/Thrills; Montfort sings along in untidy unison, muddying the melody in a winningly avant-garde fashion. There are some poppier turns, too, particularly when Monfort, with his nasal lilt, takes the lead on On The Beach and a new song. Twomey's drumming is proficient and skilfully restrained throughout the set, and is the driving force behind some masterful slow-builds and big finishes, notably on Concrete Floor. Heyward, her voice both sweet and frayed, rocks or eerily croons as the occasion demands, while her percussive flourishes and scratchy xylophone add texture and depth to the band's no-frills big sound. The set is short but sweet, and goes down a treat.