CODA and Bridezilla at Vanguard, Sydney

From their position as set-openers at various venues around the city, Bridezilla have been winning plenty of new fans lately, and it didn’t take long for the audience at Vanguard to find out exactly why. Each effortlessly cool and immaculately dressed member of the teenage five-piece showed a charming onstage individuality that was a welcome change from the current surplus of bands made up of disinterested-looking skinny-jeaned indie clones.

Debuting news songs, the youngsters soon grabbed the attention of the busy venue with their folky rock sound, not least when the exceptionally gifted violinist Daisy confidently strode to the centre-front of the stage and captivated every single person in the room. During set-closer Saint Francine, charismatic singer Holiday offered a breathtaking vocal that sent shivers down spines and ended a collection of songs that had the crowd hollering for more. It was a jaw-droppingly good show, and if Bridezilla keep on connecting with audiences in such a way, then it’s clear that they’ll have a really big and exciting future ahead of them, and deservedly so. This is clearly a band to watch out for in 2007.

The fact that the CODA drummer Jared Underwood has been bashing the skins for longer than Bridezilla’s drummer has been alive must’ve made them feel pretty ancient compared to their support act, but they didn’t let it show as they enthusiastically belted out their familiar, perky fusion of dance, classical and urban music to a packed house.

The classically trained musicians played plenty of tracks from their latest long-player Calling Mission Mu, many of which had that recognizable far-eastern feel to them. At the back-end of a tour in support of the new album, they were in jovial mode, and they punctuated their tunes by regaling the audience with amusing anecdotes from on the road. It was certainly a feelgood show.

The tiny Vanguard stage meant that the local quintet were unable to embellish their set with dancers and theatrics as they often like to, and obviously there were no vocals, but there was comfortably enough energy coming from the stage for none of this to be an issue. The crowd absolutely lapped up their fairly long set, and left the venue happy in the knowledge that, in Bridezilla and CODA, they had just witnessed two generations of very accomplished, very talented musicians.

Review by Rob Townsend.