The Rubens at The Corner Hotel

rubens


12/07/2012

Murder for a jar of red rum.

Wait, isn’t this the review of the Rubens gig at the Corner last Thursday? Yes, it is. And from now on, The Rubens will forever be associated with one of the great fun things about the English language – palindromes.

I’m not too sure if it will take off. Actually, I’m fairly sure it won’t but I know that I will always think of palindromes when it comes to The Rubens. Here’s why…

Just before they hit the stage, it was time to buy a beer for myself and a mate, and then head towards the stage. I bought the beers, and so did another guy I was with, he also had two beers… So off we went, to find the crew. After about 5 minutes of searching we worked out that it was going to be harder to find our friends than first thought. It wasn’t all bad though, we soon realised that between the two of us, we had four beers… We then gave a ‘cheers’ to the obvious win-win situation we found ourselves in.

Anyway, we did end up finding our friends (and giving them their beer), just three minutes before the show began… But those three minutes are what changed everything, for me at least. I was standing there, bantering with some friends, when I saw my mate Pat starting to talk to some girls. Being the true gentleman I am, I decided to go try and ruin it for him, until the girl he was talking to told me her name… Hannah.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello
Girl I didn’t yet know the name of: Hi, I’m Hannah
Me: Pwoah! Do you know what racecar and Hannah have in common?
Hannah: Um, what?
Me: Palindromes! They are both palindromes!
Hannah: Oh, (Awkward laugh) yeah!
Me: Taco Cat
Me: Top spot
Me: Was it a car or a cat I saw?
Hannah: Oh, look, the Rubens are starting…

I guess it’s up for debate whether the Rubens saved me from embarrassment, or they ruined my chances with Hannah. My guess is the latter, because I was fucking nailing it.

The Rubens are one of those bands I like, but am not yet totally sold on, which actually made me really excited for the gig. They began with a couple of their songs I didn’t know, but the vibe was good and everybody seemed to be enjoying it. Lead vocalist, Zaac Margin was very impressive. As most females in the place admired his presence, I was admiring the way he seemed really passionate, though it didn’t look like he was trying to hard. The mix came out as a picture perfect sound, just like you hear from a studio produced recording. He, along with the rest of the band were doing everything right. The one criticism from me though, is that there was nothing absolutely spectacular or spine tingling, I do think that one day they will provide that as well.

The four piece don’t really lift the energy of the crowd, which is something I am a bit more into, but they still held my attention and had me enjoying the whole set. The highlight for me was definitely ‘My Gun’, which has now become a favourite. It was an all in sing-a-long with most girls singing a little bit louder than boys. When this song finished, I heard something which made me chuckle. A reasonably high pitched female voice in the distance screamed “You are one sexy mother fucker!”… Followed by, which was just as loud “OMG I totally just said that”. I thought it was a pisser, and couldn’t leave it out of this review.

Following the next couple of songs (which were kind of starting to sound the same, luckily that ‘same’ sound was good though) was the well-known ‘Don’t ever want to be found’ which was the most up and about song for the night. It was another sing-a-long and was a real crowd favourite. When it finished, they went off stage, but they didn’t leave us waiting too long for the encore. Infact, when they came back out Zaac made reference to how obvious it was that they were going to come back out, and how there was clearly another song that the crowd were waiting for… ‘Lay it down’.

It finished fairly strongly, and as they threw guitar picks into the crowd, my mate Maddison became as excited as the “You are one sexy mother fucker!” girl, when he caught one of them, however he did lose it the next day. Maybe somebody else will find that pick, and get just as excited as him.

All in all, I would give them a 6.5/10 but very positive one at that. They were good, I liked them, but you have probably noticed that I am not using adjectiveS like ‘great’, ‘energetic’ and ‘out of this world’. There is only one way of describing my thoughts on The Rubens as a whole, the performance, recordings and each band members input…

Level.