Concert Review: Airbourne

A crisp New England evening, just down the street from Harvard, gave way to a steady night of rock and roll, centered in the basement of the iconic Cambridge hangout The Middle East, as authentic a rock club as one can imagine.

We began with Bad Marriage, a locally based act of no small following, with dozens in the crowd cheering on their covers and originals alike.  Led by frontman JonnyP, who himself is one part Robert Plant and one part David Lee Roth, the band rocks along like the calendar still says 1979, and they’re frankly pretty good at it.  Between the swaying and swaggering and ohbytheway pretty decent music, this band represents the good of the devil-may-care attitude of classic rock.

Then we moved on to The Wild! (exclamation point is theirs, not mine.)  The throwback rockabilly blend issuing forth from these four rough-hewn Canadian musicians is both infectious and effective.  The band comes out swinging from the jump at about a hundred miles an hour (and with the band’s name and stylization, what other choice do they have?) and the boys seem intent on working with the audience until they win it over.  Their enthusiasm makes that task surprisingly simple, and within about three tunes the gathered throngs were all but enraptured, ready to sing along, clap, dance, jump or whatever else the band required of them.  Companion to that, the band entices participation by participating themselves – all the stage antics, from the spins to the kicks to the jumps – are choreographed, thus showcasing all those little things that enhance the set and ensnare the crowd’s attention.  Now that’s not to say that The Wild! are some kind of sham act, much the opposite – it’s an acknowledgment that these gents know what they’re doing and know how to win.  Never mind that the songs themselves are energetic and churning, even the comparatively slow blues ballad “What About You?”

Finally, the showpiece.  Airbourne, now roughly ten years into the game, knows how to do all those things that The Wild! did, but do them at an even more professional, streamlined level.  As much as the act may seem spontaneous and the personality of Joel O’Keefe certainly is, the true moments of showmanship have been honed over many years of practice.  O’Keefe’s patented bar walk, where he rides the shoulders of the nearest roadie over to the bar and then rocks out atop it, has been in the repertoire for the band since their debut tour.  Nevertheless, it remains an impressive and unique trick, in this case used early in the set to enhance the experience of “Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast.”

Even with the release of the new album “Breakin’ Outta Hell,” it was a night for classics from Airbourne, as they opened with “Ready to Rock,” the boisterous single from the previous record, “Black Dog Barking.”  Airbourne mixed in tunes from their entire catalogue, including a heavy-handed and welcome “No Way But The Hard Way” which included the crowd chanting in full throat and O’Keefe gleefully swinging a spotlight over the crowd to encourage more help in the chant.

For their worth, the two new tunes on the evening, the title track and “Rivalry” popped with all the vigor and virility one would expect from an Airbourne show.  The new songs, especially the latter, sound right at home in the middle of the set, accompanied by the traditional Airbourne bombast and blitzkrieg.

For all that, though, the highlights of the evening, as one might expect, came from 2007’s electric debut “Runnin’ Wild,” to date still the best and most accomplished Airbourne record.  Five cuts in total, led by an adrenaline-inducing reproduction of the deep album cut “Girls in Black,” which was impressive both for its snappiness and for the pure weight of its punch.  All of the material from this record sounded suitably great, be it the good cheer of “Stand Up for Rock and Roll” or the measured chaos of encore closer “Runnin’ Wild.”

Two notes on the side – first, at a neat and tidy eleven songs, the set went by like a Bob Gibson playoff game, over and done in about an hour and ten minutes.  That’s not a bad thing, but there was some time lost to playful antics and unnecessary wandering, time which could have been spent cramming two or three more tunes in there.  Four albums in, the band certainly has enough material to choose from.  It’s a minor thing to gripe about, but it merits mention.  Second, O’Keefe has developed a gimmick of slamming a beer can into his head until it bursts open, which doesn’t seem like a good idea, but I’ll admit that the visual is pretty impressive.

The entire night, from beginning to end, was a night spent in the joyous cacophony of very loud rock and roll, and was a necessary reminder than the genre, in the classic sense, still has a lot of life left in it.  O’Keefe’s tried-and-true closing, that “as long as we’re alive, and as long as you’re alive, then rock and roll will never die,” is fitting testament to that.

Album Review: Airbourne - "Breakin' Outta Hell"

Airbourne has come a long way since their inception, but the Australians seem to be travelling on a nearly circular track.  That’s not meant as an insult, particularly in light of the fact that the band is following very much in the hallowed footsteps of a true giant in countrymates AC/DC.  (Sidebar: Airbourne may or may not like that they are so frequently cast in that other band’s shadow, but it is the reality of the game for them, better or worse.)  The ability to deliver consistent content spread over a series of years is to Airbourne’s benefit, therefore the fact that despite various trial and tribulations the band releases consistent product is all to the good.

So how did we get here?  The journey began with the excellent and highly promising “Runnin’ Wild,” a powerhouse debut that granted the band instant commercial exposure and the height of success.  What followed is an up and down road – sophomore album “No Guts, No Glory” was a much more muted experience, recorded at the end of a seemingly endless slog of tours and appearances.  Three years ago, “Black Dog Barking” brought band closer to center and now here we are with “Breakin’ Outta Hell,” the band’s fourth record, again released after a three year interval.

“Breakin’ Outta Hell” bears many of the same hallmarks that made “Runnin’ Wild” work so well in the first place.  There are big choruses, toe-tapping drum beats and simple but effective guitar work.  This is an album of power and virility, combining profanity and adrenaline and a party sentiment with powerful but stable rock and roll.  Seems a simple formula, and if we’re being honest, it is – but it works.  The title track, which also opens the record, is a thumping, well-paced introduction to the kind of experience we can expect for the duration.

The second cut is the anthemic “Rivalry,” which follows all the same steps and works in the same manner as the best Airbourne songs of the past.  The pace is deliberate, the lyrics direct and the chorus amplified, if perhaps the verses and breakdown are a little more muted that would have been optimal.  There’s only one flaw in the song, which is that from first stanza, you can almost detect that this song was written with commercial purposes in mind.  It’s too easy to picture this track as part of a late-season college football broadcast or any number of upcoming NHL regular season games.  That doesn’t make the song bad, but it does cheapen it a little.

About halfway down there’s “Thin the Blood,” and this is where Airbourne has always stood out from their contemporaries and even put a leg up on their forefathers – the ability to consistently and thoroughly inject some speed into the proceedings, which really pushes the song’s pulse up and makes the listener bop along.  It’s not all that different from the dialogue between Bart and Homer about doing things the ‘Max Power way.’  “There’s three ways to do things – the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way.” “Isn’t that the wrong way?” “Yes, but faster.”

Other than that, much of the bulk of “Breakin’ Outta Hell” is standard fare – partying, drinking, fighting, the virtues of rock and roll and lovema-….oh.

…okay, let’s talk about that last one for a second.  Airbourne is not at all shy about the subject of women; NOT AT ALL SHY.  Maybe I’m getting old, but a little humility would have helped here, because let me tell you, a song like “Down On You” is alarmingly candid about its subject matter, not even couched within the juvenile metaphors that rock has used for fifty or more years.  “Do Me Like You Do Yourself” isn’t exactly leaving much to the imagination.  It’s frankly sort of gross.  Take that for what you will.

Neither here nor there, the album cover looks like that one boss fight from "Contra III: The Alien Wars," but with hair.

It probably sounds like I’m especially down on “Breakin’ Outta Hell,” which isn’t the case at all, so let me apologize if I’ve been damning with faint praise.  This is a good album.  By most standards, a very good album.  But ‘very good album’ is probably about as far as it goes.  For all that this new record is better than the two albums which preceded it, it’s not quite to the level of “Runnin’ Wild.”  For all that, the real takeaway here is that Airbourne knows what they’re doing and still knows how to deliver a consistent product more than ten years later.