Axis of Awesome
Edinburgh Gilded Balloon (Monday August 30th)
For a festival that for me has been characterised by bargain shows (even Retreat!, which at £7 would be excellent for 8 bands and not bad for the four I actually saw!), a tenner for a comedy music act booked on the basis of one tune heard by the missus on the Fred McAulay show is a bit of a risk.
And, on their opening song (not the ‘hit’) it seems that my fears were justified. The tune about how lasers are a bit rubbish – you know, because they don’t do what the ones of Star Trek do and instead just cure shortsightedness – suggests that the Aussie trio might be a one-song act, a bit like their opener being a one-joke tune (the phrase ‘We Were Promised Jetpacks’ basically achieves exactly the same thing, even if it doesn’t come with an admittedly cool laser pen lightshow).
Happily, the act do pick up, thanks to their engaging repartee and the odd device, such as a couple of spinning umbrellas becoming a mime for a boy racer’s car. Musically it’s swings and roundabouts, a spoof version of ‘Hotel California’ starting off half-funny and petering out, while their examination of how every famous song ever is based around the same four chords similarly founders when it transpires that the majority of the tunes cited are recent drek by the likes of that Journey song that was in Glee, plus James Blunt and The Calling… as well as a good helping of Australian-only hits.
However, the boy band spoof ‘How To Write A Love Song’ is nothing short of genius: “because it’s a serious love song, we’ll change the key AGAIN”. For those three minutes, it’s – just about – worth the tenner admission.
Stuart McHugh
