Frank On Tap return home to Auckland to headline their first show at the boutique Big Fan club venue to a raucous welcome.
A new home-grown Indie Rock group and I have the pleasure of checking them out for the first time tonight.
These guys met and came together at Victoria University, and are currently based in Auckland. Max Hackshaw guitar and vocals, Zarek Naylor guitar and vocals, Ben Jones bass and Coady Pfeiler drums.
Just coming off an Australian tour where they were supporting fellow Kiwis No Cigar, and this show caps their very first headline gig.
The evening started with Honey for Jupiter, which is the vehicle for singer-songwriter Teegan from Christchurch.
She is listed as a solo artist on Spotify, but she has a guitarist, bass and drummer backing her tonight.
The trouble is that the rapidly filling venue becomes very noisy and it all but stifles her rather soft voice.
Sounds like bedsit Indie Pop except we lose any definition from her singing. The band behind her provide solid rhythmic support with effective little hooks.
Does improve as the set goes on, and her songs Lonely River and Too Cool, we get to hear a more confident and assured vocal performance.
The room is packing them in and seething by the time Frank on Tap start their show.
Mary and Me is off their debut album At Sixes and Sevens, released in September of this year. A melodic jangle to start, and the song rides on a pleasant harmonic drift.
She melts me down, fills up my lung/ Seems her spell has taken over me. They are threatening the Folk Rock of the early Byrds.
Reinforced by the album’s opener Breathe, which gains my attention with understated melodic hooks and then carries you down a hypnotic dreamscape. There are echoes of Radiohead and possibly the earlier Stone Roses, but this is fine and assured stuff.
They can power up with more Rock muscle and firepower with Frayed (off the Beside You EP), and songs like Motel and Sleeping Dogs can swing like crazy.
4T is one of the highlights of the album and is a stand-out live on stage tonight also. Lush and complex on the studio version, and it is given extra melodic energy this evening.
Emotive lyrical content matched to carefully layered sounds when they hit their peak. There are eastern tones on a new one, Push You Away.
Angels Whisper seems to my ears to carry the echoes of late sixties psychedelic Rock, and dare I say it but the closing song Surrender heads towards Prog territory and certainly in a good way.
A confident and assured show for their first headline gig from Frank on Tap.
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by #marcpwphoto
Frank On Tap
Honey For Jupiter
