Live Review: The Scientists

The band room is sparse as The Electric Guitars inject Corner Hotel with perhaps the most ominous offering of the evening (even though they play first). They weave between steadfast punk and droning rock-outs during their half-hour set and, heck, they do it well.

The audience then turns towards Girl Crazy, who are the first band to perform on the main stage tonight. Easily the most youthful group on the bill (as their name suggests), the trio playfully bounce throughout the echelons of bubblegum punk. The vocals go back and forth, from girl vocalist to boy vocalist; the songs concern girls, and boys, and (of course) cigarettes. The two guitarists strum for their lives with little breaks in between songs and when their set ends it's like a cold snap has suddenly attacked mid-summer.

Thankfully The Pink Tiles pick up from where their predecessors leave off. However, they do perform a more pert take on saccharine punk — Girl Crazy domesticate, you could say. Songs like Ordinary Girl conjure a sense of pop innocence that the onstage tassels, sparkles and tambourines only help to further. The songs are groovy, that's for sure. There's a certain doo-wop, Spector-ness to it all that the band's six members meld into a full set of fluttery musings; it's as much like watching a '60s girl group as it is watching a punk band.

The next act, Spencer P Jones & The Escape Committee, comprises the evening's breather from all of the incarnations of punk. Slower and far more blues-washed than the previous bands, hat-clad Jones and his three-piece band delve into the depths of their 2010 album Sobering Thoughts with some newer songs appearing too. Smooth renditions of songs new and old summon a bop from the audience, which begins to pack the Corner's bandroom by this point.

The Dubrovniks clasp the blues torch from Jones in their later set, albeit with a more rockabilly sensibility. Another band on the bill to have existed since the '80s, their tracks, like Under Your Skin, sound as trapping as ever. Something roadhouse still exists about it; it's still sexy in the same strange way that 2015 Iggy Pop singing I Need Somebody is.

A mass of heads turn to the side stage for quartet Hits. Folk in the audience are left begging the question, "Where has this band been hiding?" In this case the answer is Brisbane. Their brand of punk-ish, pub-ish rock seems straight forward enough, but whether it's the back-and-forth vocals, the powerful hooks or the primal arrangements, they are a standout. Perhaps it's all three. It's raw and refined all at once. An articulate slap of glorious, drunken zest in the face.

Rocket Science are a similar story. Roman Tucker is unmatched all evening as frontman. He struts, he dances and he climbs onto the beams above side-stage. Most of all, though, he howls from behind his understandably sweaty visage. They play some kind of punk music where the electric organ is used as a battering ram and the gyrating bass a machine gun. The guitar grates intermittently and rigidly, and everything locks into sync like clockwork: pretty much the dream product of a long-time punk band. Aural electrocution.

Then come The Scientists, the evening's main attraction. They perform in their original incarnation, with Kim Salmon transmitting his vocals over tracks that sound as rolling and gritty as ever. Theirs is a legion of Australian punk bands that champion melody as much as grit and thus, from behind thick walls of distortion tracks including Swampland and We Had Love the band emerge in a similar manner to a pretty-yet-slightly discoloured wildflower (or, rather, a pretty flower with dirt kicked over it that maintains its good looks). Needless to say, the older audience is consumed, fed copiously by the energy spilling into them from the stage. Their encore comprises a rendition of Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers' Chinese Rock; a band whose influence is evidenced throughout The Scientists' set. They nail it.