The floor is sticky, it smells bad, and a pint is $10. It’s perfect.

MUSIC
Rain Dogs ★★★★
The Tote, February 27

Rock and roll is a very codified thing. Bands sound like this band crossed with that band. It can be satisfying and it can be limiting. Rain Dogs, who released their second EP a few weeks ago, and have gathered a cult following, wear their influences plainly. It’s a narrow window, and it works better in some contexts than others.

One of those contexts is the Tote on a Friday night. The floor is sticky, it smells bad, and a pint is $10. It’s perfect. The beer garden is heaving between sets and the bandroom is dripping with atmosphere, and with sweat – it’s a muggy night.

Four bands precede Rain Dogs tonight, the highlight of which is Dogworld, with their cloudy, lanky harmonies. By the time Rain Dogs take the stage the room is packed. The lights are low, the ceiling is low and the vocals are low, drenched in reverb. They’re a simple operation. Singer Tom Murchie programs a battered Korg and croons smoulderingly, bassist Luke Scott builds hooks and guitarist Ju Shung soars over it all with jagged, glassy textures.

“Let’s take a chance tonight,” sings Murchie. “It’s getting late now / We’re going down town.” The new EP was written off the back of touring Europe and Asia, and worked on in London, Melbourne and China. What can sound thin and cool on their recordings makes more sense on stage. It comes alive. It’s sound pictures of urban dystopia, thick, tense and cinematic. They’re at their best when they build a groove and let people sink into it, on tracks (all from the new EP) like More Than Desire, Nights Are Lonely and Neon Dreams. At the night’s peak I feel like I’m in a club in an ’80s cop movie, in the best possible way.

Some of those influences I mentioned are a bit on the nose. They draw heavily on the coarse ambience of ’70s synth-punk legends Suicide, right down to Alan Vega’s hepped-up shrieks, and they squeeze a Nine Inch Nails cover into the middle of the set (Into the Void).

Shung, who also plays with Bodies, Wet Kiss, and more, is their greatest asset. “We gotta keep this guy in the country,” says Murchie between songs. What the others are doing is fun, but it’s a landscape for Shung to play across.

The result is a hell of a mood. Transportative. Let them slip the bounds of genre and transport us somewhere new next.
Reviewed by Will Cox

THEATRE
I Thought You Said ★★★★
Explosives Factory, until March 7

The stars are falling from the sky. But Sam (Ally Taueki-Gatt) and Frankie (Finn Corr) still have to work. Stocking shelves and manning the register at a rarely frequented petrol station, they reckon with themselves, each other and what it means to be a good person over the course of a night.

Bronte Lemaire’s two-hander is about and for progressives; those who have never had their consciousness raised or participated in collective action are absent from consideration.

Instead, I Thought You Said centres on the self-cannibalising tendencies of the left, prone to nitpicking one another’s modes of resistance and holding each other to unrealistically high standards at the expense of directing their ire where it would be most productive.

Sam is a cynical armchair abolitionist, debilitated from converting theory into praxis due to their unyielding moral purity and outsized self-interest. The idealistic reformist Frankie outwardly does all the right things – posting on their stories, attending protests – but struggles to sacrifice personal convenience when it collides with detrimental environmental and labour practices.

The two characters spar with one another in heated exchanges, covering timely concerns like climate “doomism”, collective moral injury, performative activism, free will versus fate, the self-censorship that results from living in a panopticon.

Who you identify with most will hinge on your own brand of progressivism, but even so, Sam is a rigidly dogmatic character. Frankie’s nervous tics, affected mannerisms and facial expressions that are constantly at war with one another are brought to life in a spectacularly singular way by Corr. But in embodying a reflective character who evolves throughout the play, they’re also far more compelling to watch. Taueki-Gatt is effective as Sam, but less so as an alternative to Frankie – their moral stagnancy culminates in them re-treading familiar ground throughout, until the very end when a revelation places their actions in new light.

Interludes that simulate the oversaturation of our feeds punctuate their arguments. Sam and Frankie lurch around one another – their movements gradually growing more combative as a discombobulating mishmash of social media loops, slop content and news updates are projected against the wall to Jakob Schuster’s discordant sound design and Allira Smith’s strobe lighting.

Other times, they monologue to the audience under the guise of everyday interactions, gifting us a glimpse into these characters’ interiority.

Lemaire has crafted a make-believe yet exceedingly real world in I Thought You Said – one where stars are mined for their energy, mega corporations reign supreme, and job opportunities are few and far between.

As Aisha Tabit and Julian Machin’s carefully constructed set is increasingly dismantled, the play hurtles towards its inevitable conclusion – encapsulated by its perfectly calibrated final line.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.