Jebediah, Preytells

Date: Wednesday, 16th Sep 2009
Venue: Mojo's Bar
Reviewer: Ben
Rating:

User Rating:

Jebediah @ Mojo’s
Jebediah, The Preytells
Wednesday 16 September 2009
Mojo’s Bar, North Fremantle

As anyone aged between 3 and 30 in the late 90s will surely attest, Jebediah were, at one point, one of the more popular contemporary guitar bands in the country.  Certainly, in a remarkably swift rise to prominence, they broke down the doors for alternative acts to find an audience beyond the hopeless expanse of desert that separates Perth from much of the rest of society.

 

The band’s place in WA history has been waffled about extensively, but what was most important for the hundreds of twenty-somethings who lined up outside North Fremantle’s irresistibly cosy Mojo’s Bar this evening was the fact that Jebs’ tunes are, for so many, part of the cultural fabric for those of us who were teenagers at the time.  And ten years later, the songs still stand up.

 

Anyway, the fact that this band were to perform an intimate show in such a small venue after such a long absence from the live scene, was totally exciting.  The hottest ticket in town, Jebediah at Mojo’s was worth putting everything on hold for.  Reportedly, many people left disappointed this evening due to the limited capacity of the venue, but the first 200 or so in line were rewarded by a great night.

 

In fact, the venue should be congratulated for resisting the temptation to cram any more people through the door as the crowd density on this night was just perfect.  By the time second act The Preytells took the stage, the main room was half-full—the crowd distributed fairly evenly throughout that room and the nifty little outside courtyard.

 

Clearly stoked to be a part of tonight’s lineup, the Preytells received an increasingly warm reception from the crowd as their set progressed.  Playing Pixies-ish indie rock with a chilled vibe and some sweet harmonies, this band are nothing transcendental, but they are certainly very tight, and utterly competent to boot.

 

Certainly, the crowd warmed to the Preytells after a couple of songs, and they even got some dancing happening in the vicinity of the front row.  Clearly there was an air of good time enjoyment in the air, and why not?  There was no way that tonight was going to suck for anybody.

 

For a full twenty minutes prior to Jebediah’s set, the audience had, for the most part, found their positions for the rest of the evening and were following the band’s every move as they set their equipment.  The anticipation was awesome.  Finally though the band took the stage and Kevin Mitchell thanked the crowd for attending their “open rehearsal”, before leaping straight into a high-energy rendition of Slightly Odway’s Lino, and following it up quickly with Animal.

 

If there was a person in the house not singing every word, then they didn’t deserve to be there.  Catchy as shit, and improbably tight, the band kept the hits coming for well over an hour, focusing mainly on their big singles, with a few random nuggets (Monument was one) for good measure.

 

Military Strongmen, NDC (indie scene?), Fall Down, Touch The Ground, Please Leave, Harpoon; there’s barely a song this band have touched over the years that hasn’t been pure gold.  Requests for Teflon were politely declined by the band (“we don’t want to play anything we wouldn’t be comfortable performing in our bedrooms”), and for the most part the song selection was genius.

 

Where the band shine are in those unapologetically bouncy pogo-pop songs, and it was great to see that none of this stupidly fun energy has been lost over the years.  Certainly bass player Vanessa Thornton was jumping around like a school kid, clearly stoked to be there.  The by-now almost-veteran Kevin Mitchell handled proceedings as a consummate frontman, while his brother Brett was as stoic, and Chris Daymond as cool as ever.

 

Mostly though, this night was just great fun, and the band had a good deal of interaction with the audience, requesting many a glass of whiskey, and just generally enjoying the atmosphere.  The only song that the band managed to actually fuck up was, amusingly, also their breakthrough hit Leaving Home, which the crowd went ballistic over until the band stopped playing mid-way through the second verse.  The warm-hearted manner in which this gaffe was received by the crowd says everything about the amount of love going on in Mojo’s on this Wednesday night.

 

Actually to be honest and without wanting to finish on a sour note, there was a little too much love in the room.  The only downside of this entire night was the existence of two extremely horny couples, clearly high on a little more than just life, who were making out gratuitously side-of stage.  Fair enough, this was a pretty cool moment, but seriously, those in close proximity could have stayed home and gone on the Internet if we wanted to mix good music with pornography.  Get a fucking room hey.

 

In all seriousness though, kudos to Jebediah and Mojo’s for a ridiculously entertaining evening full of some of my favourite tunes.  This show was totally awesome, and certainly rates as local gig of the year for me so far.  What could be more sensational than seeing a legendary band I loved as a kid finishing off with a high-energy version of Jerks Of Attention—an entire crowd of 200 people singing “I’m ten foot tall, the world’s so small, I know it all when I’m wasted” with reckless abandon.

 

Fantastic show.