The Avalanches at Sydney Metro, 5th July

2002, and The Avalanches find themselves in a bit of a pickle. Having spent most of last year basking in the warm glow of tardy success - their Since I Left You album garnered critical praise not seen in any Australian band since, oooh, AC/DC at least - it wouldn't have been hard for them to lose momentum and grow to hate the record they'd so lovingly created...

SILY took over four years to make, and even though it took foaming-at-the-mouth reviews from the UK, Europe and America for the good burghers of Oz to sit up and take notice, take notice they did. Timing, of course, is everything: The Avalanches have spent virtually every waking moment in the last 18 months promoting the record, so it's not unreasonable to suggest that they might be a little bored of it now.

It was, then, perhaps a merciful release for the five-strong collective when drummer Darren Seltmann leapt off a speaker stack during a London show and broke his ankle last September. The band were forced to cancel numerous gigs (including an appearance at the ARIAs, Australia's biggest music industry awards show), allowing not only the convalescing acrobatic sticksman but also the whole of Team Avalanche to take a rest.

But while Seltmann's still recovering, the restless rest of the band obviously couldn't keep their itchy scratching fingers still, and so we find ourselves tonight, stuffed into an already unfairly busy Metro (no floor-space=no stoopid dancing - boo!) awaiting Dexter and Robbie's arrival on the decks.

What follows is a pretty immaculate, two-hour exhibition of How To Get A Crowd Panting For More, starting with 15 minutes of bubbling calypso and punctuated with tantalising snippets of everything from Azzido De Bass's evergreen "Doom's Night" to the Jackson 5's mighty "I Want You Back". Surprisingly not adopting the attention-diverting route taken by similarly-mided jocks like Coldcut, there's no multi-media slideshow, no fancy lighting (well, not much anyway) and no overcomplicated "ooh, look at me, aren't i a clever decknologist?" pretensions: The Avalanching pair simply seem intent on keeping the punters moving, in spite of the reluctance of at least half the room to do so.

The simply-does-it method works like a charm. By concentrating on just the music, the duo leaves Sydney in no doubt that in spite of the Australian charts being clogged up with mindless trance-pop trash, there is a real and nagging need for decent funk round these parts, and that's an itch some feckless chancer like Jamiroquai ain't gonna be scratching any time soon.

Dexter & Robbie flit between disco, hip-hop, classic house and chunky '70s rock like it all sounds the same in their heads, deftly chucking in occasional samples from their own tunes along the way ("Frontier Psychiatrist" seems a favourite, especially the horse and the parrot). Even a busted bass amp can't stop the flow - ok, so it does stop the flow for a bit, but nobody seems to care much - and when they return for the first of two encores with, get this, Le Tigre's "Hot Topic" we know we've just witnessed something extremely special. Later, we'll witness fellow 'Lanche James De La Cruz spinning classic early '90s hoover-rave (who'd have thought "Quadrophonia" would ever be played again?!) back-to-back with, uh, Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy", but we'll not let that dampen our ardour. What a show. Now, let's see them top Since I Left You...

The Avalanches website

(originally published 16th July 2002)