Saturday 08/09/07 Midnight Juggernauts, Damn Arms, Young And Restless @ The Governor Hindmarsh, Adelaide

After their last Adelaide gig – opening a headline tour, but at a much smaller venue – it’s no great surprise that Young And Restless have managed to pull a reasonable crowd out of the smoke garden and onto the dancefloor. Even if it is a beautiful spring evening and their style of music is light years away from that of the main act for the night. Last time out, frontwoman Karina Utomo proved herself to be one of the most compelling performers you could hope for, armed with a weapons-grade scream and a reasonable measure of charisma. Tonight, for the last gig on an eight-date support slot, it’s all a little more laid back. Utomo’s intensity is way down, but that’s not entirely bad. For one thing, it’s still a decent enough performance, and importantly it’s one that you can imagine her turning in, or bettering, night after night. That certainly wasn’t the case last time out, and the rumour was – from her record company, no less – that after the superlative, and exhausting, thirty minute show that Gigwise caught, she was somewhat subdued for the next one.

The other big bonus is that Utomo’s relatively quiet evening affords a much better opportunity to judge her band. They’re rather good. As with so many other punk/metal bands, originality isn’t a particularly strong point, but they’re engaging and sharp enough to suggest that their best work is still ahead of them. And it won’t necessarily sound just like this. With Utomo upfront, there’s no knowing what will happen.

Damn Arms work in a completely different genre, and don’t once suggest that they’re going to transcend it, or even tinker with its boundaries. They might look and line up like a fairly typical indie band – drums, bass, guitar and keyboards – but their music is essentially electro-pop, best described as a rougher, harder, and less interesting take on The Presets. Vocal duties are shared (if unequally) by all of the group bar the drummer, but none of their singing demands attention. Poor sound does nothing to help. A decent-looking PA has been brought in, but the bass it produces is mainly a distorted low rumble. It works to emphasise that Damn Arms are capable of the rhythmic precision of a jackhammer, and limits them to a broadly similar level of subtlety and expression.

But their biggest problem doesn’t become obvious until half an hour or so after they leave the stage, at which point it takes Midnight Juggernauts no more than five minutes to render Damn Arms entirely superfluous. The Juggernauts are similar, very similar, but virtually everything about them is better. Their musicianship, their songwriting, and their sense of theatre, for example.

Midnight Juggernauts open with their recently added drummer thumping out a beat on a floor tom at the front of the stage while the atmosphere builds, and it soon becomes obvious that this is 'Road To Recovery', one of the more interesting tracks on Dystopia, their debut album. Before it ends they’ve displayed more invention than Damn Arms managed in their entire set. The problems with the sound system haven’t gone away, but they no longer matter quite so much. That’s partly because there isn’t a full time bass player (Andy Juggernaut switches between guitar and bass) but it’s also because the Midnight Juggernauts’ songs are more interesting, as they demonstrate with highlights such as 'Into The Galaxy and Shadows'. There’s often a Gallic flavour to their material – Daft Punk and Air both come to mind – and there’s a musical playfulness here too, as well as plenty of excitement. The Juggernauts claim that ELO are among their influences, though it’s impossible to imagine that Jeff Lynne and his fellow Brummies would ever have inspired so much crowd surfing.

In truth, Midnight Juggernauts are supremely professional tonight rather than inspired, but this level of good is plenty good enough.