Live Review: The Smith Street Band, The Front Bottoms

The Smith Street Band don’t fuck around when it comes to their support acts. Sharing the bill tonight are Poison City labelmates Fear Like Us and London imports Apologies, I Have None peddling a raw, grim kind of screamo folk. The Front Bottoms come in just before the headliners and on an ordinary night they could have stolen the show. Sweating, sincere college radio punks from New Jersey, the Bar/None Records act is led by singer Brian Sella, who bays his doleful-but-ebullient, Blink 182-meets-The Pogues lyrics, “I’m scared I’m gonna die as lonely as I feel right now…” Fists pump the air from a loving notch of fans in the middle of the room and people have already started crowdsurfing. Still, as good as they are, The Front Bottoms are only a warm-up.

The Smith Street Band cult is jammed against the crash barrier as The X-Files Theme comes whistling through the speakers. It’s a blokey scene, but not too rough; people are hopping around like kids at Christmas. They erupt as their heroes take to the stage. This is the first of three, sold-out Corner Hotel shows to launch the band’s third album Throw Me In The River and they open with Something I Can Hold In My Hands. On the album, the song starts quietly, but frontman Wil Wagner is as twitchy as his audience and he charges out of the gate; no sooner on stage, no sooner showering the crowd with his explosive spit and enthusiasm. They roll straight into Surrender and the crowd heaves up another impossible notch. Two songs in, it’s this scribe’s gig of the year. By the time they get to Sunshine & Technology (the title track from The Smith Street Band’s 2012 album), the singer and his audience are screaming down each other’s throats. When he explodes again during The Arrogance Of The Drunk Pedestrian, Wagner’s hollering is reminiscent of very early Something For Kate, back when Paul Dempsey was little and had unqualified rage. But Wagner is never just angry or sad, despite his intermittent depression. His optimism is the infectious thing, which in a weird way recalls Frenzal Rhomb and even The Living End – their moshpits look pretty similar.

This crowd knows every word of the bible according to Wagner. He writes hooks and leaves his guts on the floor and these starving, misshaped kids lap it up, enthralled by his honesty. It’s really kind of beautiful. Wagner is beautiful, so grateful for their success. “This is a dream come true already and we’ve only played four songs,” he says. This will be his main theme for the rest of the night and you can hardly blame him. Every voice is lifted for every single song; the most awesome, heart-ripping session of bogan karaoke you can imagine. At one point, maybe it’s a trick of the light, but it looks like the bellowing crowd is actually blowing Wagner’s hair back. From his perspective, it surely looks like a dream.