Words by Annette Geneva
Photos by Pete Mellows
Special thank you to Destroy All Lines
DICE rolled into Hobart on their Altitude Tour only days after their second album, I Thought The Altitude Would Make It Worth The View, debuted at #1 on the ARIA Australian Albums Chart. Not bad for a band that, not all that long ago, was building a following out of Perth. The album is their highest-charting release yet and the culmination of a couple of years spent moving from local indie favourites into a genuinely national and increasingly international touring band.
And there was something profound about watching a freshly minted #1 Australian album being played in the sweaty confines of Altar Bar on a Sunday night. No big production. No large venue-sized spectacle. Just guitars, drums, pedals, cables everywhere and a room full of people who traded sleep for hearing these songs live.
First up were Middle Palms, the Hobart/ Melbourne outfit, who eased the room into the night with their warm, melodic indie sound. Their set moved through Don’t Know What, Kaleidoscope, Again and Again, Fingers. There is an easy quality to Middle Palms that works particularly well in a room like Altar. Nothing feels overworked. The songs breathe, and there is enough melody to pull you in without demanding that you immediately fall in love with them. While not especially high energy on stage, it did seem that the smaller room constrained them a little. Stay The Same and Slow Down stood out to me. One was emotional and personal and the other potentially the best song I’ve heard that night.
Just past 8pm Brisbane’s Mid Drift arrived and turned the temperature up. The room was packed and sweaty teenagers were really committed to bopping to these shiny, upbeat indie pop songs.
Their setlist read like a little roadmap of their sun-drenched indie-rock world: Know Your Name, Byron Boy, Washed Out, Play Pretend, Open Hand, Madness, Nicotine, I Need Me Too, Ice Cubes and Whiplash. The band have been picking up momentum through supports with the likes of Ocean Alley and Old Mervs, and you could see why. There is a looseness to them, but underneath it is a very tight little engine. They feel like a band still climbing, which makes watching them now particularly fun.
Then came DICE.
Call Me For A Good Time. Loose Change. Double Espresso. Alter Ego. Footprints. Breathe. The set moved between the new album and the catalogue that has made DICE such an exciting live band. And then, just before Double Espresso, the machinery briefly fought back. There were some technical issues early in the DICE set, the kind of little live-show interruptions that can either flatten a band’s momentum or become part of the night. DICE had a few moments of having to stop, adjust and regroup before getting everything back where it needed to be. But rather than feeling disastrous, it gave the whole thing a slightly more human edge. You are suddenly reminded that underneath the lights and the polished album production, this is still four people standing on a stage trying to make a complicated pile of electrical equipment behave itself.
And once Double Espresso kicked properly back into gear, the room didn’t care about any of it. The song remains one of DICE’s greatest live moments. It has that instantly recognisable opening riff that seems to flick a switch in the audience. From there the set gathered momentum: Chasing Hearts, Stars, Bullet Train.
There is an interesting tension in this set because I Thought The Altitude Would Make It Worth The View deliberately moves DICE away from some of the grit of Midnight Zoo towards something more expansive, lighter and euphoric. The band’s own description of the album talks about finally finding their own altitude, and live you can hear that evolution without the older songs suddenly feeling like they belong to another band.
Loose Change feels particularly important in that transition. Written from a voice note and developed in Los Angeles with G Flip before being recorded at EastWest Studios with producer Joe Chiccarelli, it carries the bigger, brighter sound of the new record while retaining the restless energy of songs like Double Espresso. And that’s probably what brought my attention to DICE just a few months earlier. They make songs that want to be played live.
You can hear the difference between listening to the record and standing three metres from the stage while the guitars are coming directly at you. The new album might be more polished, but it hasn’t become precious about it. There is still sweat in it. There are still pedals underfoot, cables running everywhere and the occasional technical problem threatening to derail the train.
And that’s funnily appropriate for a band called DICE. You throw them. Sometimes they land perfectly. Sometimes you have to pick them up and roll again.
First single off the new album COOLER, with its bigger production and keys from Jay Watson, represents another side of the new DICE sound, while Echo brought the night down gently after what had become a surprisingly huge Sunday night.
There was something satisfying about seeing DICE here, too. A Perth band with a #1 ARIA album playing Altar Bar in Hobart, supported by a Brisbane band who are clearly on their way up somewhere and a Tasmania born, Melbourne based band building their own little corner of the scene. Three bands at different points on the same climb. And DICE are currently pretty high up that mountain.
The altitude might be worth the view. But sometimes the best part is being down in the crowd watching that rise and being part of that climb.
PHOTO GALLERY
DICE
