The Red Paintings

The Red Paintings, Animal Rebelion tour came to Factory theatre for their first show in Sydney in months and what will be the last visit for 2007. This was a licensed all ages show, so even just after the doors had opened there was a reasonable crowd for local act Spazmoo, a bass and drums duo, producing guttural sounds with unfortunately undecipherable lyrics, leaving most of the crowd sitting on ground. Next up we had Battle Circus from New Zealand producing fast choppy metal style riffs with lots of energy, finally got a reasonable number of people to stand up and start moving.

After a long break we finally got to the headline act, The Red Paintings, the crowd was buzzing with discussions seemingly centring around their support for the Dresden Dolls which had brought this band to the attention of many people, myself included. Starting out with two girls in wolf masks walking onto a smoke machine flooded stage covered in black body paint, these girls would be the human canvases for the evening getting painted live on stage during the set.

Trash McSweeny the song writer, singer and driving force behind the Red Paintings, appeared on stage dressing in a little red riding hood outfit; white dress and red satin hooded cloak, carrying his pet hamster in a wheel; accompanied by the howling of wolves in and obvious reference to their new EP Feed The Wolf launching into the title track, immediately getting the crowd moving. The rest of the band joined Trash on stage wearing the usual Kabuki style make-up and kimonos, they are a five piece: drum, guitar, bass, violin and cello with the cellist doubling as keyboard player.

When to set reached 'The Fall of Rome' four painters arrived on stage to begin the painting of the human canvases and two large sheets of butchers paper mounted on either side of the stage, I was particularly impressed by the work on the right side as the artist managed to morph his work to 3 different pictures during the 90 minute long set. Throughout the course of the show several paper mache animal masked people moving through the crowd to joining the band on stage during the later stages for the set.

At the end of the night after Trash had a quick change before the lament of 'We Belong In The Sea' and for the final song of the set invited the crowd to join the band on stage, leaving the crowd energised and happy, though hot; the air conditioning seem to fail at some point during the set, probably when the PA shut down after the smoke machine set off the fire alarm.

Set list: Feed The Wolf, It Is As It Was, Cinema Love, Just People and Leaves, Fall Of Rome, Mercy Seat, Streets Fell In My Window, Vampires Are Chasing Me, Dead Children, Dead Adults, I’ll Sell You Suicide, Stackhat, The Revolution’s Never Coming, A Forest, We Belong In The Sea, The Chase

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