The floor is sticky, it smells bad, and a pint is $10. It’s perfect

MUSIC
Rain Dogs ★★★★
The Tote, February 27

Rock and roll is a very codified thing. Bands sound like this band crossed with that band. It can be satisfying and it can be limiting. Rain Dogs, who released their second EP a few weeks ago, and have gathered a cult following, wear their influences plainly. It’s a narrow window, and it works better in some contexts than others.

One of those contexts is the Tote on a Friday night. The floor is sticky, it smells bad, and a pint is $10. It’s perfect. The beer garden is heaving between sets and the bandroom is dripping with atmosphere, and with sweat – it’s a muggy night.

Four bands precede Rain Dogs tonight, the highlight of which is Dogworld, with their cloudy, lanky harmonies. By the time Rain Dogs take the stage the room is packed. The lights are low, the ceiling is low and the vocals are low, drenched in reverb. They’re a simple operation. Singer Tom Murchie programs a battered Korg and croons smoulderingly, bassist Luke Scott builds hooks and guitarist Ju Shung soars over it all with jagged, glassy textures.

“Let’s take a chance tonight,” sings Murchie. “It’s getting late now / We’re going down town.” The new EP was written off the back of touring Europe and Asia, and worked on in London, Melbourne and China. What can sound thin and cool on their recordings makes more sense on stage. It comes alive. It’s sound pictures of urban dystopia, thick, tense and cinematic. They’re at their best when they build a groove and let people sink into it, on tracks (all from the new EP) like More Than Desire, Nights Are Lonely and Neon Dreams. At the night’s peak I feel like I’m in a club in an ’80s cop movie, in the best possible way.

Some of those influences I mentioned are a bit on the nose. They draw heavily on the coarse ambience of ’70s synth-punk legends Suicide, right down to Alan Vega’s hepped-up shrieks, and they squeeze a Nine Inch Nails cover into the middle of the set (Into the Void).

Shung, who also plays with Bodies, Wet Kiss, and more, is their greatest asset. “We gotta keep this guy in the country,” says Murchie between songs. What the others are doing is fun, but it’s a landscape for Shung to play across.

The result is a hell of a mood. Transportative. Let them slip the bounds of genre and transport us somewhere new next.
Reviewed by Will Cox

MUSIC
Lithe ★★★
170 Russell, February 28

Before embarking on his North American tour, Melbourne-based producer and rapper Lithe treated fans to a hometown show that celebrated the release of last year’s Euphoria album. In the darkened, underground space of 170 Russell, formerly known as Billboard, grainy images of bulls, snakes and wolves flashed almost subliminally on stage, as Lithe appeared to a roar from the audience.

Phones were pulled from pockets, lighting up the dance floor like flickering stars in the darkness, but this was not a night for dancing. Lithe, whose real name is Josiah Ramel, brings his own brand of dark, effects-heavy R&B in super slow, woozy waves.

Accompanied by two accomplices on the decks, Lithe’s signature soulful delivery and rap phrasing is underpinned by an unrelenting bed of deep repetitive bass that oozes from the speakers.

Songs bleed into one another, and the hypnotic atmosphere is only pierced occasionally when Ramel revs up the crowd between tracks.

“Thanks so much, Melbourne, let’s make some f---ing noise,” he said midway through an hour-long set that featured several of the tracks from Euphoria, which was released last November. The album followed his 2025 EP Lost in Euphoria and What Would You Do? from 2024. The new album features collaborations with the American rappers and songwriters Don Toliver and Hunxho, plus rapper and record producer Cash Cobain, and was largely produced by Lithe.

Confidently prowling the stage, Lithe soaked up the adulation of fans on a hot, steamy night that perfectly suited a carefully crafted, darkly atmospheric set. Dressed in black, his minimal stage production was punctuated by sporadic shards of light and recurring images that play into his on-stage bravado.

On the eve of his largest overseas tour, Lithe is hitting close to 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify; since first appearing on the scene in 2017, he now boasts a steadily growing fan base at home. Melbourne rapper VV-Ace opened the show with his hard-hitting, soulful grooves.
Reviewed by Martin Boulton

MUSIC
Strauss and Mozart ★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, February 28

Beckoning listeners to eras of elegance long past, this thoughtful program brought the bonus of a conductor appearing as soloist with his own orchestra.

Displaying his prowess as a flautist, chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Jaime Martín, gave an eloquent and polished account of Mozart’s rarely heard Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major. Martín, who was a flautist in several prominent ensembles before he took up conducting, brought his customary showmanship to the task.

Deploying a well-rounded tone, melodic phrases were expressively pointed and technique was always at the service of poetry. The long second movement, with its distinctive harmonic colourings, formed a particular highlight.

The rondo finale made the most of its dance-like elements, connecting it with Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major that opened proceedings.

In its grandiloquent Overture, the trumpets were almost too brilliant for the sensitive acoustics of Elisabeth Murdoch Hall. By contrast, Martín was happy to use a soft-focus lens in the Air, (which gained popularity as Air on a G String) and retain the romantic elements of its later incarnation. The remaining dances (two Gavottes, a Bourée and a Gigue) were all rhythmically crisp and buoyant.

Replete with further dance references, Richard Strauss’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme, a suite inspired by Molière’s play about a wannabe nobleman, provided a sparkling finish. Overflowing with the composer’s delightful sense of humour, there were ravishing recollections of Lully, who provided incidental music to the original play.

Really a concerto for orchestra, many of the principals, such as oboist Johannes Grosso, contributed superb solos. However, it was concertmaster Natalie Chee with her succession of demanding soliloquies who crowned this witty work with enviable skill and characterful empathy. A final madcap Viennese waltz sent the enthusiastic audience members away with a spring in their step.
Reviewed by Tony Way

DANCE
Signature Works ★★★
The Australian Ballet, Regent Theatre, until March 1

Are the works on this eclectic program of short ballets and divertissements really signature works? Is there a shared pressure of style, lineage, theme or intent that orients how they speak to one another and to the company performing them?

I’m not convinced. Yes, this one-weekend gala – exclusive to Melbourne – shows off The Australian Ballet’s range, from classical showpieces to contemporary fragments, but range alone doesn’t guarantee a satisfying evening of dance.

The headline attraction is George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial, set to Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Created in 1941, this is ballet as courtly spectacle, a self-consciously grand display of corps patterns, ornamented with formal graces and stylised Russian courtesies.

Balanchine revised the ballet in the 1970s, loosening it, scrapping the decor and redirecting the ensemble into a freer, easier flow. What had been a nostalgic portrait of 19th-century formality became a vision of ballet’s place in modern, supposedly egalitarian America.

What puzzles me is why the Australian Ballet persists with the older version and all its made-up pageantry. Is it logistics? Is it the work’s status as the company’s first Balanchine? Or is it just that a bit of Russian kitsch still shifts tickets?

Nonetheless, there’s a sort of smiling clarity in this performance, and enough winking understatement to make the affectations bearable. Saturday afternoon’s principals, Benedicte Bemet and Chengwu Guo, are in fine form – the ceremonial aspect particularly suits Bemet.

Pianist Andrew Dunlop is terrific in the pit and the Tchaikovsky playing is one of the performance’s real pleasures. Another musical treat, earlier in the show, is pianist Kylie Foster in Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Tarantella, sparkling in Hershy Kay’s virtuosic arrangement.

Other program highlights include the trio from the Kingdom of the Shades, with Rina Nemoto, Yuumi Yamada and new company member Precious Adams, and the pas de deux from Flames of Paris, with Samara Merrick and Marko Juusela: fast, sporty and full of joy.

The contemporary portion of the bill is uneven. Marco Goecke’s Morpheus’ Dream is the evening’s low point: a tedious duet depicting a failed romance. It feels like Roland Petit for sad robots. Even music by Lady Gaga can’t jolt it into life.

In contrast, a new work by Yuiko Masukawa is quietly engrossing: a twilight world of bowed heads, stooped torsos and sudden releases into length, set to music by Caroline Shaw. With diaphanous grey costuming by Ailsa Woodyard, it has an original, searching temperament.

Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

THEATRE
I Thought You Said ★★★★
Explosives Factory, until March 7

The stars are falling from the sky. But Sam (Ally Taueki-Gatt) and Frankie (Finn Corr) still have to work. Stocking shelves and manning the register at a rarely frequented petrol station, they reckon with themselves, each other and what it means to be a good person over the course of a night.

Bronte Lemaire’s two-hander is about and for progressives; those who have never had their consciousness raised or participated in collective action are absent from consideration.

Instead, I Thought You Said centres on the self-cannibalising tendencies of the left, prone to nitpicking one another’s modes of resistance and holding each other to unrealistically high standards at the expense of directing their ire where it would be most productive.

Sam is a cynical armchair abolitionist, debilitated from converting theory into praxis due to their unyielding moral purity and outsized self-interest. The idealistic reformist Frankie outwardly does all the right things – posting on their stories, attending protests – but struggles to sacrifice personal convenience when it collides with detrimental environmental and labour practices.

The two characters spar with one another in heated exchanges, covering timely concerns like climate “doomism”, collective moral injury, performative activism, free will versus fate, the self-censorship that results from living in a panopticon.

Who you identify with most will hinge on your own brand of progressivism, but even so, Sam is a rigidly dogmatic character. Frankie’s nervous tics, affected mannerisms and facial expressions that are constantly at war with one another are brought to life in a spectacularly singular way by Corr. But in embodying a reflective character who evolves throughout the play, they’re also far more compelling to watch. Taueki-Gatt is effective as Sam, but less so as an alternative to Frankie – their moral stagnancy culminates in them re-treading familiar ground throughout, until the very end when a revelation places their actions in new light.

Interludes that simulate the oversaturation of our feeds punctuate their arguments. Sam and Frankie lurch around one another – their movements gradually growing more combative as a discombobulating mishmash of social media loops, slop content and news updates are projected against the wall to Jakob Schuster’s discordant sound design and Allira Smith’s strobe lighting.

Other times, they monologue to the audience under the guise of everyday interactions, gifting us a glimpse into these characters’ interiority.

Lemaire has crafted a make-believe yet exceedingly real world in I Thought You Said – one where stars are mined for their energy, mega corporations reign supreme, and job opportunities are few and far between.

As Aisha Tabit and Julian Machin’s carefully constructed set is increasingly dismantled, the play hurtles towards its inevitable conclusion – encapsulated by its perfectly calibrated final line.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

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