Cut Off Your Hands & Laneway Festival '09

It's time to wax lyrical about these lads. Prior EP releases, knee-knocking (in the good way) tunes, and now this... After wooing us on radio and loudspeaker with the release of their album 'You and I', Cut Off Your Hands rolled into the town of Radelaide on the Laneway Festival 2009 train. And man, they were amazing! Despite the 40 degree heat sizzling the Saturday festival-goers, Cut Off Your Hands had enough energy to fire up a power station. It was first time I'd been to a gig of theirs (shakes fist at heavens over a prior Adelaide gig this blogger missed due to conflicting schedules or possibly it was exams - the ever-present interference of education!).

Anyway, kicking off with Happy As Can Be featuring lead vocalist Nick Johnston wielding drumsticks to showcase his military drum prowess (and probably try and out-thump their very own drummer), the mike cut out at the beginning and we sadly missed most of the vocals until halfway through the song. Still, it fired up the crowd's foot-tapping. One Mike that was working all the way through was guitarist Mikey (my scraping the bottom of the barrel pun?), who is leaving the band (sob) and whose Foals t-shirt I much admired. Whipping through tunes new and old it was splendid, it was sunny, peppered with punky riffs, shameless pop tunes (take the lovely Still Fond as an example) and a good slice of lead singer athletics in the form of Nick Johnston. That boy can jump. And climb up on amp to wow the audience. And throw himself upon the floor in splendid melody. Dancing and smiles all round.