Sound Republic: Live Reviews

78 Saab & The Jewel and the Falcon – Annandale Hotel, Sydney (29th October, 2010)

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By Max Easton
30 October 2010

78 Saab & The Jewel and the Falcon – Annandale Hotel, Sydney (29th October, 2010)

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Launching their latest album ‘Good Fortune,’ Sydney’s much-loved 78 Saab played the Annandale with support by Yae Tiger! and Youth Group/theredsunband collaboration, The Jewel and the Falcon.

78 Saab are an odd band to figure out. Playing together since winning a Canberra band competition fifteen years prior, they’re most definitely veterans of Australia’s rock scene. Yet mention the name in most music circles and you’ll get a response about the unreliability of German cars of the late 1970’s. Their apparent obscurity is then tipped on its head when they turn around and pack the Annandale to its very limits, which kind of confuses you as to what is going on with this Sydney band…but maybe we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here, after all, there’s an entirely different band playing.

The Jewel and the Falcon open their set to a half-full Annandale, playing a collection of indie dreamscapes courtesy of Youth Group’s Patrick Matthews and theredsunband’s Sarah Kelly. At this stage it’s hard to know whether this is a side project for the duo or their primary focus, but it seems promising regardless. It may have been at odds seeing Kelly dwarfed behind a Gibson SG playing anti-Angus Young riffs that swirl and swoon underneath the undeniable indie lead parts of Matthews, but it’s this exact type of awkward visual conflict that the quintessential indie band needs to have to be taken seriously in the Pitchfork world. Some tracks hit, some tracks miss, but by the end of the set most people seem to be thinking good things about this new project, one that leads perfectly into the night’s headliners.

By the time 78 Saab have taken the stage, the Annandale has as good as reached its capacity. A polite applause with speckled hoots greets the band and they waste no time launching into the opening two tracks from the record they’re there to launch in Both Sides and Whatever Rules You Break. The crowd consists of a strange mix of old and young, with an average age slanting a little towards the middle aged, all of whom seem to be quite responsive to the new tracks, and incredibly excited at the launch of Come On from 2004’s Crossed Lines. Probably existing as their most likely album, 78 Saab are not reticent at all to devote a large portion of their set to it, from the tracks that found their way to Triple J in No Illusions and The Beat of Your Drum to the straight-forward rock number, The City is Humming.

For an album launch, the set-list spends a lot of time circling their greatest hits package, with tracks like Drive and Sleepyhead from 2007 album The Bell’s Line partnering their Crossed Lines counterparts to make up the crux of the gig. The set plays out more like a retrospective illustration of just how ridiculous it is that this band never hit than an introduction of new material, but that’s hardly a bad thing. 78 Saab are clearly a tight group, bantering between themselves and the crowd, questioning whether the south of France was a pub in Newtown and doing it all between great versions of great songs.

At one stage, frontman Ben Nash’s guitar strap breaks, responding to the inconvenience by pulling his stage mic down and playing on his knees. Such is the crowd’s affection for the band that someone decides to leap onstage to correct his broken microphone stand, which results in an awkward final chorus where Nash tries to arch his neck to finish his part while the perfectly functioning microphone is dragged away from him with best intentions.

Finishing off with a boisterous encore, 78 Saab make the Annandale fully aware that they're in no way a relic of the past. Instead, 78 Saab are a vehicle that despite its innate ability to miss out on radio airplay, just keeps turning over. At one point, Nash decrees that "if you want us to play until we're fifty, we'll play until we're fuckin fifty" and as far as all signs delivered on the night, there's every chance that we'll be seeing the Saab play well into senility.

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