Australian favourites, Regurgitator rocked the ANU bar just a week after the release of their seventh studio album, ‘SuperHappyFunTimesFriends’.
Support acts, electronic solo artist, Disasteradio, and punk three-piece, Super Best Friends, couldn’t have been more different but they were the perfect warm up for Regurgitator’s genre-spanning style of music.
Canberra band, Super Best Friends, kicked off the evening at around 8pm. The venue was only just starting to fill as the band took to the stage, but their short set of energetic punk songs including, ‘Ready, Aim, Fire’, and, ‘Everything’s Fine’, proved to the small audience they were certainly worth arriving early for.
Disasteradio from New Zealand was up next with a couple of synths and a vocoder. His infectious enthusiasm, a “love song about telephones”, the “sexy jam” ‘Charisma’, and the puzzling, yet joyous, ‘Gravy Rainbow’, had the whole crowd smiling and a few people dancing though no one could match the exuberance of the flailing-limbed musician leaping about on stage.
The bar was full when Regurgitator hit the stage, dressed in matching skeleton jumpsuits. With a career spanning seventeen years, they had no shortage of songs to pick from. Quan Yeomans, Ben Ely and Peter Kostic played a mix of fan favourites from all their albums, from, ‘Kong Foo Sing’, on, ‘Tu-Plang’, to the most recent single, ‘One Day’.
The set was as diverse and energetic as their back catalogue. Performing in front of an animated screen, they belted out hip hop with, ‘Fat Cop’, had the crowd singing the ’90s pop classics, ‘Polyester Girl’, and, ‘Black Bugs’, and replaced traditional instruments with a mobile phone in, ‘Super Happy Funtime’.
While it’s impossible to predict what Regurgitator will come up with next or what genre they’ll choose to throw at you, you can always expect a sense of humour and songs that make you want to dance. Tonight was no exception.
Once they had added white baseball caps and sunglasses to their outfits, the band returned for an encore, and after ‘My Friend Robot’ and ‘! (The Song Formerly Known As)’, everyone left SuperHappy.
Photography by Chris Whitfield
