Barons of Tang

It’s Night of the Living Dead in Melbourne tonight. The bitter cold and misty, foreboding fog make it seem like our jaunt to the NSC tonight is a horror movie about to go awry. Luckily, we arrive at our destination sans hanging limbs or gangrenous bite marks.

Curse Ov Dialect, I thought, in my limited knowledge of the band, may have been an odd choice to support the Barons tonight. But, upon catching their easy, breezy, beautiful hip-hop hybridism, I realized how their enigmatic majesty would work tonight. Tracks like House of Clocks easily showcase the band’s creativity process; you can find at least a handful of genres in any one track. More than just a one-trick hip-hop pony, I was suitably impressed.

I don’t even quite know how to describe the subsequent hour-odd. I feel as if I am holidaying in a Spanish villa; patrons boogie and salsa their way into a fine sweat, arms flailing, faces shining with glee and condensation. The world is clear and wonderful and amazing. The concoction of these instruments (a veritable stew, including double bass, sax, a breadth of percussion and the ever-underrated accordion) makes for a rockabilly-jazz outburst the likes of which I’ve never seen, nor given patronage in. Tracks like Blood Wedding and Tango for Billy grow to merciless speeds, but the crowd will not give in. This gypsy-jazz-punk band is theirs, and shall be enjoyed to the last tantalizing drop. It is a transcendent sensation to see people reaching such joys; to see patrons forgetting about the rising poverty and coming recession and callousness and other such negativity outside and jumping head first into the wonder that is the gypsy-village in summertime world of the Barons of Tang.

I’m not friends with the band. Nor do I revoke my journalistic integrity by force-feeding sweet words of bands I do not enjoy into your mouths. Would I lie to you? Though the band is on hiatus due to members heading overseas until August, you best go check these guys out. I can assure you you will feel the same overwhelming hum that washed over me and the rest of the Northcote Social Club too.

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