The Black Elk Medicine Band

Just a half full venue for the first show of the Black Elk Medicine in Melbourne more than a week ago. Some familiar faces were gathering at the Northcote Social Club -if you are a Melbournite and you have not gone yet to this gig venue it is plain unforgivable-.

Surprisingly, I saw a four piece band hitting the stage: Robert –ex-Grey Daturas-on drums, Nick Allbrook  -who has just announced his departure from Tame Impala - on bass guitar and Isaiah on guitar, being Shags Chamberlain the last addition on keyboards. Hardly any foreplay and the band went straight into a delightful rhythmic trance, with bass and drums building up in a simple structure to allow Isaiah float around with a perfect seamless guitar trance. The keyboards were adding a hypnotic quality to the music that let the guitar explore the fretboard at times in search of the perfect pitch.

The whole show had a bit of a jam feel, but at the same time it did sound elaborated and the fact that Isaiah jumped on the microphone for a short period of time emphasized the instrumentality of the rest of the tracks, adding a mellow beautiful tone towards the end of the show.

It was definitely worth seeing and Isaiah has demonstrated once again there is quite a lot of creativity coming out of his hands. For the three Australians I can only say ‘bravo!’ for making possible this project. I hope to see more new and exciting things coming out of each of ‘youses’ over the next months.

If you –sigh!- missed the show, please have a listen to a beautiful excerpt of the show at the Northcote Social Club at the bottom of this post.

Thanks for reading.

And have a listen clicking on the video below if you fancy!