Review: Shy Panther + Flower Drums at Hipflask HQ

We’ve been putting on gigs that are exclusively advertised on hipflask for a little while now. Sometimes there’s a bit of hype, most of the time, we let them fly under the radar. Last Saturday was the best bash that we’ve hosted to date.

It was a rainy night and the party kicked off at 1am, but the room was at capacity. The bands had sound checked and rehearsed in the basement, so we knew things were going to go pretty well. Flower Drums opened the night with a lycra-tight 40 minute set. Leigh Craft knows how to write a song and the rest of the band are obviously on the same page about how to present it. There’s a lot of texture going on, you’ve got a few classic bits of kit – a beautiful Ampeg bass rig and a Fender amp, but then there’s an SPD-S, MicroKorg and a laptop too. The dance-floor was packed and the songs just kept coming. I was one microphone short, so I didn’t have a ‘talkback’ mic (you know the one that lets the soundguy talk to the band). There was this one point where the band were jamming out on a groove and I managed to dance my way to the front of the crowd, grab a hop hog out of the esky, eek a wink and a nod out of all the band members and then dance back to my place behind the sound desk just in time for the next song. Synchronised schwinging.

Everyone headed upstairs for the next half hour whilst Shy Panther got ready. Chilling out on Toastface’s deck with a beer, at 2am on a rainy night is a beautiful experience that I’m stoked to be able to share with people now that we’ve got the basement humming.

You know that feeling when you get yourself a well deserved treat, like a well-deserved slice of cake after you’ve been for a run, or a well-deserved beer at the end of a hard day’s work? Yeah, well Shy Panther’s set was a well deserved treat, for everyone who stayed up late on that rainy night. There’s rarely anything single-sided going on with these guys, they’ve got more layers than lasagne. It was the first time I’ve heard the band with a Moog synth – this is a great addition, and a fantastic compliment to the Rickenbacker bass, Rhodes, samples, electric guitar and drum kit. There’s some good, haunting stuff going on here. The set creates an Alice in Wonderland kind of vibe and we’re all at sea together, in our echo submarine.

Super sublime. I’m stoked that Shy Panther are back.