Gig Review: The Oceans

By The Metro Gnome

The Oceans
Candy's Apartment
2 June 2005

The Oceans is a five member band with vocals, guitar, bass, keys, and drums. The show I saw was an industry event showcasing the refreshed band and delivering their new release, Prayer for the Sun. Candy's apartment is a cool little venue for live music - in a basement setting with low ceilings, dark alcoves, and candles lit for a nice effect. There's a large family of mirror balls scattered all over the dance floor. One downside for bands is that there doesn't seem to be any "offstage" area away from the audience.

Anyway - to the band - formerly Five Flavoured, The Oceans is trying to reinvent itself and has gone through some extensive work to record this new album. Hat's off to the guys for backing themselves and putting in the effort. The industry night was put together to shop around for a record label to give the album a promotional boost....

Hit the audience solidly from the first song to the last... or not?

Due to the lack of any off-stage area - there's nowhere to warm up - the guys, including the singer, weren't warm when they started. They used the first song to warm up - and that was truly disappointing. Enough said.

The band played 9-10 songs, presumably all off the album, and then finished with some old favourites for their (definitely present) fan base. The songs were all good, but nothing really stood out as amazing. One song completely rubbed me the wrong way - the instrumental, live, techno, dance crap that they pulled out in the middle of an otherwise palatable set. It was too long, too techno, too repetitive, and too loose - the changes didn't look or sound well rehearsed - there was a lot on on-stage communication going on. But, and I suppose here's what counts, the crowd actually seemed to love it. At the end of the diatribe, a 20-something behind me said to his mate, "That was an awesome song!" I have to admit that lost a bit of faith in the future live music at that comment. But, then again, I might just be getting old???? I suppose if you have to see techno, see a band playing it rather than a DJ spinning it....

By the way, this show did have the best light show I have seen in a long long time; it really provide a great vibe to the whole night.

But I digress, the lead singer had a good voice - different - a bit of reminiscent of Yes frontman, Jon Anderson. He had a higher pitch than most male vocalists and it was a nice touch. That said, he does need to develop as a frontman before the outfit can be taken to the next stage....

All in all, I'd say that The Oceans has the potential to develop a strong fan base and to sell records, but only if they play venues - only if they GET OUT THERE! But the feeling I got in the end was that they wanted to do a record and then get a record deal without getting too dirty on the live circuit. My advice: get dirty boys - play more.