One of the best live bands in the world is finally back in Melbourne

MUSIC
The Hives ★★★★★
Forum Melbourne, July 19

To attend a concert by The Hives is to be inducted into a sweaty, euphoric cult for just over an hour of frenetic power – “think of it as a three-hour show played twice as fast,” singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist quips.

The Hives perform at Forum Melbourne, July 19, 2025. Credit: Richard Clifford

The Swedish band was an integral player in the garage rock revival of the early 2000s, and quickly garnered a reputation as one of the best live bands in the world, with Almqvist their braggadocious, energetic ringleader.

Decades on, they’re still on top of their game. This tour marks The Hives’ first Australian shows since 2015, when they supported AC/DC in stadiums around the country – and going by the crowd’s fervent reaction throughout the night, it’s clearly a welcome return. Audience members range from grey-haired seniors to excited teenagers – this music unites generations through the power of rock’n’roll.

On the first sold-out night of two in Melbourne, large lanterns spelling out the band’s name backdrop the stage, and a long introductory buzzing instrumental builds anticipation. Four men walk out in black and white suits, their backs facing the crowd. Then Almqvist appears, and it’s go time.

Almqvist’s on-stage persona is exaggeratedly obnoxious: he swings the microphone cable like a madman, kicks his legs high into the air and sprays fountains of spit skywards in a grotesquely irreverent display. Four songs in, he’s already jumped down into the crowd.

Pelle Almqvist’s on-stage persona is exaggeratedly obnoxious.Credit: Richard Clifford

Almqvist often taunts the audience: “Has anyone ever been to a rock concert before?” he bellows. The crowd roars in the affirmative. Almqvist doesn’t miss a beat: “Then f--king act like it!” We jump and dance and scream, but Almqvist always demands more.

The biggest crowd reactions are for the songs from the band’s heyday, such as Hate to Say I Told You So and Walk Idiot Walk – newer tracks garner a more muted response. But Almqvist’s crowd work makes it all shine – teaching the audience to sing a bass line so he can yell over the top of it, or prolonging a call-and-response section to the point of ridiculousness.

In a long-running tradition, Almqvist splits the crowd in two for the final song of the night, Tick Tick Boom. He strides up the middle and implores everyone to get down low, then all jump up at once as he runs back to the stage. It’s pure chaos, just like the band is. Their latest album title says it best: The Hives Forever Forever The Hives.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

JAZZ
Pat Jaffe’s LUNSEN ★★★★
The JazzLab, July 18

Pat Jaffe’s new band is named after an enchanting forest that he discovered while on a student exchange in Uppsala, Sweden. Lunsen (the forest) captivated Jaffe with its combination of tranquil beauty and untamed wildness, and LUNSEN (the band) aims to capture and reflect that dichotomy.

Pat Jaffe’s LUNSEN perform at The JazzLab on July 18. 2025. Credit: Dan McKay

Friday’s concert at JazzLab was only the quintet’s second outing, and – while all the players were all reading charts and still getting to grips with the music – it was clear that Jaffe had picked the perfect colleagues to bring his vision to life.

The Melbourne composer-pianist also introduced each tune with the story of its genesis, setting the scene for the musical tales that were about to unfold. Jaffe has a wonderfully effusive, enthusiastic presence, and his stories were often hilarious – but also touchingly honest and sincere.

Likewise, the music contained both irrepressible energy and heart-melting beauty. Glass and Glue began as a delicate duet between Jaffe and bassist Claire Abougelis, before adding subtle horns and spacious cymbals as Jaffe’s rippling piano built into a rousing cascade.

Melbourne composer-pianist Pat Jaffe performing at JazzLab.Credit: Dan McKay

Wide Pants moved seamlessly between flowing lyricism and majestic propulsion, Jaffe beaming with delight and bouncing on his piano stool as his emphatic chords urged the band forward.

Grandma’s Song was gorgeously tender and restrained, while Greg’s Benedict – inspired by South African jazz and underpinned by Marissa Di Marzio’s exuberant drumming – conjured an air of joyful celebration.

Now Music featured expressive solos from Thien Pham (on trumpet) and Zac O’Connell (alto sax), and a recurring melodic motif that the audience was invited to hum as the musicians drifted into silence.

The night’s final number, Eldorado, was a soulful jazz waltz that swept the band and the audience along in an evocative stream of nostalgia, memory and sheer pleasure. With LUNSEN, Jaffe has turned one of his favourite places in nature into a musical space for discovery, trust, passion and vulnerability. It’s a space I’d gladly revisit any time.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

MUSIC
Axis Mundi ★★★★
Elision Ensemble, Melbourne Recital Centre, July 18

Served by some extraordinarily skilled musicians, Elision Ensemble’s contemporary music encounter offered some ear-opening experiences as emerging and established composers rubbed shoulders in thought-provoking juxtaposition.

An earlier performance of Axis Mundi.Credit: Lauren Murphy

American bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward scaled the heights and depths of Liza Lim’s Axis Mundi with breathtaking dexterity, while Richard Haynes revelled in the huge technical and expressive demands of John Rodgers’ Ciacco for solo bass clarinet. Both scores embraced a kaleidoscopic spectrum of sounds, including guttural elements spiked with multiphonics and microtonal inflections of pitch.

Elision Ensemble’s contemporary music encounter, Axis Mundi, offered some ear-opening experiences/Credit: Lauren Murphy

Mexican composer Julio Estrada’s yuunohui’nahui’ehecatl featured a titanic trombone cadenza in which Benjamin Marks punctuated his playing with sounds of breathing and vocalisation. This writing, reminiscent of the performance art of 20th century Italian composer Luciano Berio, later included Marks and trumpeter Tristram Williams facing each other, so that the trumpet’s bell could be placed into the trombone’s in quasi-erotic fashion.

By contrast, Charlie Sdraulig’s Air began with barely audible susurrations, perhaps evoking the distant memory of a seaside scene.

Yuin woman, Brenda Gifford from Wreck Bay in New South Wales, adopted jazz-like elements in Wanggadhi to recount the Dreamtime story of the seven sisters who eventually become the Pleiades constellation.

Roidl-Ward’s dazzling technique shone again in Victor Arul’s Barrelled Space, a relatively lengthy and complex ensemble piece that began life as a solo bassoon work.

Bryn Harrison’s Double Labyrinth after Richard Dunn, a tribute to the late Australian artist, was a masterclass in harnessing techniques and structure to satisfying musical purposes and a timely reminder that fascinating effects and academic constructs are not an end in themselves. Effectively using a gentle busyness to portray the navigation of labyrinthine pathways, the coalescing of quiet and cohesive textures signalled emergence from a puzzling journey.

While contemporary music may be a puzzling journey for some, Elision remains one of its most convincing advocates.

Reviewed by Tony Way

THEATRE
Rumbleskin ★★
Ames May Nunn, fortyfivedownstairs, until July 27

Three queer vignettes in Rumbleskin twist into some strange terrain.

Rumbleskin at fortyfivedowmstairs is made up of three vignettes. Credit: Kimberley Summer

The show explores a collective imaginary that seems to have been colonised by the American Western, and the play vacillates between an action quest with cowboys and rodeos into body horror, psychological suspense, teen melodrama, and even earnest folk-style musical theatre, without much rhyme or reason to guide the way.

Unfortunately, this dreamlike melange of disparate elements interferes with consistent world-building, leading to confusing and somewhat threadbare exposition – a problem when you’ve got multiple narrative strands on the go at the same time.

A mysterious affliction known as Rumbleskin stalks the land. It’s unclear whether this is a supernatural curse, an infectious disease, or perhaps an ancient reminder of the power to be found in the skins we wear.

Whatever the case, it brings a smudge of gothic to tales of a trucker rescuing a teen runaway, a young rodeo champion meeting his match, and a god-fearing town whose way of life is upended by a stranger and a preacher’s daughter.

In this trio of stories, a mysterious affliction known as Rumbleskin stalks the land.Credit: Kimberley Summer

None of these stories is particularly compelling or complete, nor does the choice of the American Western feel entirely organic, especially when international publishing can’t get enough of outback Oz Gothic right now.

I wonder if the fact of our cultural familiarity with US film and television alone is enough to justify it, although it must be said that camp and exaggerated gender performance have always been part of the genre and the queering of the Western has a long tradition that stretches back to well before Ang Lee made Brokeback Mountain.

It’s just that Rumbleskin doesn’t make the most of that cultural intersection, dramatically. All the panto-like caricature can sometimes be funny – cue ridiculous Southern drawls – but the performers lean too hard on low comedy to pave over a thin script, in a way that undercuts emotional investment in the characters and their fates.

That said, the comedy is more reliable the larger the lampoons get, and you’re glad of the occasional laugh to alleviate the cringe of some downright embarrassing moments, including strained chorus numbers where the ensemble bursts unexpectedly into song.

Ames May Nunn’s central conceit of an affliction involving skins remains tantalisingly underdeveloped. It needs more elaboration and definition if it’s to corral the onstage world into something more thematically cogent and turn this thigh-slapping vision of a queered Wild West into more than a fragmentary oddity.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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