Ball Park Music review (for Rave Magazine)

 Ball-Park-Music-610x409

 

View and comment on this article on the Rave website HERE

Ball Park Music / Northeast Party House / The Jungle Giants

The Zoo – Sat Oct 15

The Jungle Giants open proceedings by serving up a sonic selection of fun and friendly guitar pop that is summery enough to convince an Eskimo to invest in a pair of board-shorts and a badminton set. Next, six-piece dance rock outfit Northeast Party House unleash a swathe of thick fuzz bass-lines and twin guitars drenched in delay. Some of their songs are uncomfortably reminiscent of Bloc Party, but the second half of their set reveals some original material that really lifts the roof. If these guys aren’t huge in the near future, I’ll eat my hat. Of course, my hat is a novelty hat constructed from nachos, but nevertheless…

Ball Park Music greet a rapturous crowd by opening with Literally Baby, the first track from their recently released debut album, before segueing straight into Rich People Are Stupid and then announcing, “Hi Everybody, we’re The Jezabels.” At the end of their first five minutes on stage tonight they’ve already displayed an impressive mix of skilled musical performance and ridiculous humour. By the time they hit All I Want Is You the crowd is more than ready to participate in a good ol’ fashioned clap-along, which is followed shortly thereafter by a trombone-led cover of Marilyn Manson’s Beautiful People.

Throughout their set BPM give the impression that they are having even more fun than the crowd, (if that’s even possible). The band closes with the obscenely infectious iFly, Sam Cromack deciding to conclude a consistently brilliant evening by pouring a bottle of red wine on the crowd. It’s the kind of move that would be career suicide in any other line of work. Tonight, however, it seems nothing but appropriate.

JOSH DONELLAN