The Maine, joan, FELONY. @ The Gov, Adelaide 17/9/2024
The Maine are back in Australia and it has been a hot minute since they were here last. Rock’s version of a jazz lounge band, the laid back, affable, and cool Americans arrive in town on the back of recently released new single Touch which the message ‘The Maine Is Dead’ flickering throughout. Well, are they?
Along for the funeral procession is joan and FELONY. with the latter opening. Their mix of 80’s melody with modern sound actually performs great in this modern setting. You can feel yourself transported back to the summer of 1990, the synth mixing with guitars and sultry vocals from Felony that roar before scaling back again. A touch of Chrissie Hyde, a dash of Wilson Phillips and a lot of class. FELONY. brought back a soundtrack to fantastic memories tonight.
joan meanwhile arrive from America with crooning pop punk. Tokyo has a disco beat that has singer Alan Thomas sway, mesmerising the audience into complying. So Good is, well, so good and the ballad I Loved You First is nothing short of MTV glossy mid 90’s video fantastic. A stunning song performed beautifully.
However, we are here for The Maine, opening with Dose No. 2, sequinned jackets and trousers, they get right into what we are here for. Fun!
Diet Soda Society bounces, Right Girl shuffles like old school Beatles and Loved You A Little has the audience sing Charlotte Sands spot perfectly.
It’s a twenty three song set list spanning the bands whole career, with three tracks from debut Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop all the way through to four tracks of the most recent, self titled album, with hits galore in between. As joked by vocalist John O’Callaghan, ‘we’re playing for sixteen hours!’
The lack of numbers at the gig is disappointing for such a refined band however the passion of the crowd makes up for it, and for their part The Maine perform like in front of 80,000 with O’Callaghan commenting that while small ‘we are mighty’ and they really are.
Despite the stage being fairly cramp for a five piece they make it huge as the place squeals for Love & Drugs.
They get the crowd to choose the next song and it’s Slip The Noose, like seriously, who does that? That’s impressive.
Lost In Nostalgia has people sitting on shoulders singing away, the room full of high sprits before O’Callaghan gets into the crowd to start a ‘dance off’ between two fans during Sticky.
Black Butterflies and Déjà Vu becomes another level when the crowd take over. Misery morphs into Blame and it’s all zooms through in an adrenaline rush.
They get random bloke Nick up from the crowd to sing during Girls Do What They Want and that’s cool. The fact they also get the crowd chant his name is pretty awesome!
The room dances during Dirty, Pretty, Beautiful and before you know it, the show is over. Every person in the room was involved, whether singing, dancing or getting on stage like Nick. What was clear is this is not the end of The Maine, rather it is a new beginning.
Live Review By Iain McCallum