Matt & Kim @ The Zoo, Brisbane, 09.05.13
By Carmen Juarez
When your life is starting to feel like the Friends theme song, this is the kind of band you want to be knocking a few beers back to. Or, more appropriately, shaking what yo mama gave ya to. The ever-encouraging, shiny-happy antics of Matt & Kim might not have a lasting effect, but their infectious, positive as a green light boy/girl dance pop antics are bound to suck you in for the length of their set.
The last time I saw these two was at the Big Day Out, not on a decidedly musical stage like just about every other international band, but out in Lilyworld with the circus freaks and the tribal dancers. And the time before that they were playing at a swimming pool down the street… This New York duo know how to get the party started by context alone, so of course they manage to turn The Zoo into a zoo – with at least one girl in the audience worked into such a frenzy that she quite literally tears her top off and flings it on stage. This was never going to be your average Thursday night.
Matt and Kim bound on stage backed by some AC/DC (good one, guys), and it’s moments before Kim is pulling an Animal, sporting a wicked grin as she thrashes away behind her drum kit. Our effervescent entertainers are here supporting their new album Lightning, and of course begin pouring out numbers like the extremely catchy ‘It’s Alright’, not forgetting good ol’ fashioned oldies like ‘Good Ol’ Fashioned Nightmare’ and ‘Cameras’.
Every song is a party, and everyone is invited. The moment Matt hits the keyboards his face lights up, expression like a laughing clown’s. Nobody can help but wiggle a little, until the two juggernauts-in-disguise on stage provoke us into really letting go. They must have a time of it in cities where crowds are more likely to peg a bottle at the stage than swivel their hips, but I can’t imagine these two ever losing a “you better dance” battle. The pair are so full of energy that they have to whip out a ‘Niggas In Paris’ keyboard rendition when they aren’t filling our ears with their numbers. Yeah.
How can anybody help but smile when we’ve got two lightbeams for entertainment on stage? Well, they can’t – the entire room is beaming and pulsing with energy. Every song is singalongable, and every song is sung along to. Dance moves are mimicked, people are turning to each other and dancing with one another. Everyone has forgotten all of their problems for this finite moment of time. You can almost taste the optimism. We’ve all got goosebumps yet it feels like Summer.
Fans of throwing stuff into their audiences – confetti, balloons, themselves… tonight is no different, with Kim standing on her kit before she starts standing on the crowd. People wanna kiss her, hug her, hold hands with her. I’m surprised they ever let her down.
I doubt anyone has ever seen another band more capable of stirring an entire Brisbane crowd into a frenzy – swearing at us, promising sex for us and providing the soundtrack for us to really Bust. It. Out. This is the sort of spectacle that makes kids wanna buy some instruments and try this music thing out for themselves.
The party sort of ends with the phenomenally popular and impossibly catchy ‘Daylight’, but our cheery friends are back with encore staple ‘Lessons Learned’ (kinda get the feeling there’s a hidden lesson to be learned in every one of their songs…), and it’s all over before we know what just hit us. Come back soon Kim and Matt!
