Gyroscope's 'Choose Your Own Adventure Tour'

Gyroscope brought their much hyped ‘Choose Your Own Adventure Tour’ to Melbourne on the 18th of November. The Aussie rock favourites and Perth locals treated fans to just over an hour of songs from their four album catalogue at The Corner Hotel in Richmond.

Gyroscope went for something a bit different with this tour, given their was no new album or single to promote, they instead asked fans to vote for the songs they wanted to hear on tour. Allowing punters to vote for any song from their repertoire and the most popular ones would become part of a 16-song set list. Recently the band did the same thing on a west coast tour, and Gyro fans are unanimous on what the band’s best material is, with the voting for the east coast shows choosing the exact same set of songs. Before even talking about how they played, hats off to the band for thinking outside the box and doing something a bit different and getting fans involved.

Before seeing Gyroscope, those who turned up early saw City Riots and Closure in Moscow. The latter has been creating a bit of buzz lately, and when seeing the band live it’s easy to see why. Lead singer, Christopher de Cinque wore a golden flowery headband, retro adidas zip-up, and leggings, complete with long hair, which made him look something like a Russell Brand and Jesus hybrid. Special mention to him for his engaging crowd participation and amazing, entertaining and at times hilarious dancing and rapid arm and hand movements in time with the music.

There was a half an hour break between Closure in Moscow’s tight and engrossing set and Gyroscope. After sneaking away for a few beverages, coming back into the music side of the venue it appeared most people had timed their run to get there just in time for the main act. The place has sold out that day and the atmosphere was electric and full of anticipation.

Gyroscope received a rousing reception when walking onstage, then wasted little time getting into the swing of things. They began unravelling the hits to an extremely appreciative crowd. Old crowd favourites were on show, such as ‘Doctor Doctor’, ‘Safe Forever’ and ‘Take This For Granted’ from their first album. In this reviewer’s opinion I’ve always felt their first album was slightly rushed and lacked consistency, yet obviously five songs from their 2004 debut getting voted onto a 16 song set proves that my opinion isn’t the general consensus.

In fact there were more songs from the first two albums than there was from the newer two, which was interesting, albeit they all received incredible approval when the first few bars of each song would begin. On their Facebook page along with the set list voting, was a poll asking which album of theirs is their best. My vote this time, was popular. The masses agree that their 2005 sophomore effort, ‘Are You Involved?’ is their finest work to date. Unsurprisingly the band played six songs from that album including ‘Dream vs. Scream’, ‘Sexxxy’ (which they hadn’t played in five years before this tour) and ‘Beware Wolf’.

The highlight of the night, and of their set for the last couple of years, was their take on that album’s best known song, ‘Fast Girl’ combined with Midnight Oil’s political masterpiece ‘Beds Are Burning’. The staple of their set seemed to really get the crowd going, and I’m sure it was good for the band to know that ‘Fast Girl/Beds Are Burning’ was voted ahead of standalone ‘Fast Girl’ as they’ve been performing the two songs together in their set for a few years now.

New songs like ‘What Do I Know About Pain?’, ‘Baby I’m Getting Better’, ‘Snakeskin’ and ‘1981’ still received plenty of love from a raucous crowd. Frontman Daniel Sanders concurred with his bandmates that it was probably the best Melbourne crowd ever and went on to say, “You’ve made a bunch of Perth (expletive)’s very happy, Cheers”.

My only disappointment was that they didn’t play new album lead single, ‘Some of the Places I Know’ and the patriotic anthem, ‘Australia’, but that’s personal preference. Any gig is going to get fans disagreeing about the set list, and letting fans vote is the most diplomatic way to please fans. Of the previous half a dozen times I’ve seen them play, overdoing guitar distortion or poor choice of songs on the set list has been the killer. The sound was great, and while there’s a couple of songs I’d have subbed in to the set list, overall it was an electrifying and entertaining gig for all involved. The Corner probably won’t get rocked that hard again this year.

Share this review on Facebook