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With just an EP and one debut album released in 2009, you may think Sweethead would be confined to a limited setlist. But how wrong you would be.
Tantalising the crowd to a blend of the old and the new, the band forged an hour rich in elation coated in darkness to embrace hopes of a fruitful future for the band.
Setting the tempo for the night, the band kicked off the set with the motorised drive of ‘The Sting’, the opening track from their debut self-titled album. Serrina Sims and the gang mixed the well-known with the never-before-heard to create a set of roaring elegance. Standing petite in a gold sequined dress, Sims stood as the dainty diamond amongst the rough and ready statures of Troy Van Leeuwen and drummer Norm Block.
The band’s onstage personality replicated that of their name, fun on stage but serious on music. With comical interchanges between tracks to tickle the crowd, the origins of the name ‘Sweethead’ come to fruition as double entendres are tossed back and forth between Van Leeuwen and Sims before diving back into the rhythmic onslaught of the offset Fender Jaguar and humbly-rumbling Jazzmaster. A cocktail of the dark and the jovial is concocted as the bass-heavy ‘Reverse Exorcism’ rolled into thrashy single-coiled chords.
The show was the last before the band set off for Reading festival to perform at the Festival Republic Stage. The set ended with Queens of the Stone Age-esque ‘Great Disruptors’ with offshoots of Van Leeuwen solos reminiscent of those heard on ‘Songs For The Deaf’.
If you ever wondered how QOTSA would sound with female vocals, this is the closest you’ll get. The band returned on stage to cover their namesake David Bowie’s ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ to close the show in fun-loving spirits, with Sims joining the crowd for mid-gig jigs before returning to the stage to end the set in rock chick fashion.
