A warm Thursday night at Hamilton's Nivara Lounge run by Hamilton Underground Press saw Street Chant play the first show on their album release tour. Seeing vinyl copies of said LP, Hauora, had quite a few punters in a spin as they paid and put them aside.
Support from local punks The Contenders and Auckland's thoroughly entertaining Big Tipper set the scene before a reasonable Thursday night crowd. Street Chant eventually took to the stage and blatted their way through a mix of old and new songs from the latest LP as you would hope.
The new songs are excellent, as are the old. The new material is quite varied too. Proto-punk one moment (Insides), Elastica-esque pop punk the next (Pedestrian Support League), and having listened to the album a lot since this gig, it's clear to see that Street Chant's songwriting has matured in exactly the right way.
In terms of the live show, the band was tight and the songs were great. It was clear that the majority of the audience were unfamiliar with a great deal of the material, not that this dampened their enthusiastic reactions between songs. The 'curse of the sofa' was in full effect though - grrrrrr - the lure of a lazy sit down winning out over actually dancing. Experience tells me that this is always a bit of a downer for a band and it did detract from the show as a whole, through no fault of the band. Conversations afterwards claimed that many people wanted to boogie, but self-consciousness kicked in. Damn you, low alcohol (drink responsibly kids) school-night shows!
Anyway, when all is said and done, the new LP was launched, it is excellent, and you need it in your lives. Hauora forever.
Street Chant is Emily, Billie and Alex (The DHDFD's), who formed back in 2009 with Mikey Sperring (The Drab Doo Riffs) on drums; and came to the attention of the underground with the pop-grunge nugget Scream Walk, which was featured on Real Groove's Awesome Feeling II CD.
Sperring was replaced by Brown, they changed their name from Mean Street and things really kicked off...
The massive track Yr Philosophy was arguably the biggest local single of 2010. Street Change have toured NZ with their spiritual antecedents The 3Ds and were hand-picked to play around Australia with The Dead Weather.