Oh Mercy: The Hi-Fi Bar

Last night I ventured down to The Hi-Fi Bar for Oh Mercy's final headline show of the year.  The first act of the evening was five piece band Buckley Ward, who played a decent set of indie music.  Next up was Owl Eyes (aka Brooke Addamo).  She and her band performed a very entertaining set of electro/indie pop music which got crowd up and dancing.  The biggest response was for her Triple J Like A Version cover of Foster The People's "Pumped Up Kicks."

Oh Mercy took to the stage and started with "Hold Out Your Hand" and then played one of my Privileged Woes faves "Broken Ears" (complete with a blistering guitar solo from Simon).  For these shows they had a keyboardist in the band to filled out the sound.  Alex was in a very giddy mood and did lots of hand gestures while singing throughout the night (almost like Neil Finn video level stuff).  They played four new songs, including "Lady Eucalyptus," "My Man" and "Europa."  Other highlights were "Confessions," "Let Me Go" and "Lay Everything On Me."  At one point the band left the stage and Alex performed David McComb's (The Triffids) "The Good Life Never Ends" solo and mostly a capella to the attentive room.  The first single off Great Barrier Grief "Stay Please Stay" was the final song of the main set, and for the encore they played "Keith St." and finished with a raucous version of Leonard Cohen's "Memories."  This was one of the more interesting Oh Mercy live gigs I have attended, and will probably be it for a while as they take a break to start writing for the new album.

Here is a clip of Oh Mercy's Triple J Like A Version cover of ELO's "Evil Woman"