Monday 07/07/08 Wolf & Cub, The Holidays, Megafauna @ The Edinburgh Castle, Adelaide

Some bands are just too quiet for their own good: the Ed isn’t a huge place, not by any stretch, but you can’t even hear Megafauna in the next room. Thankfully then, when news of their arrival eventually filters through to the bar, there’s till some action left. Though perhaps you’d better make that inaction: we’re not talking about a band with any sort of physical presence here. There’s a 20-something guitarist (Scott) who looks for all the world like an 85-year-old about to fall asleep into his soup at the nursing home, perhaps even into a fatal coma, a bass player (Kynan) who’s only marginally livelier, and a drummer (Corinna) who looks as if she hasn’t got any idea at all about what she’s doing. All change. Rotate one place. Corinna now looks as if she doesn’t know how to play bass, while Scott is on drums and Kynan is on guitar. There’s a change after every song but the penultimate.

Yet none of this apparent lethargy or inexpertise gets in Megafauna’s way. Their slow and heavy sound has hints of Mazzy Star, Joy Division, the Velvets and plenty of other influences that are equally impeccable, and they go on to prove that they’ve learnt the most important lesson in rock and roll: you’re better off with two notes and some attitude than with any amount of technical flash. It’s about soul. And Megafauna have it.

The Holidays are altogether better and altogether worse than Megafauna. They’ve got much more in the way of conventional skill and stagecraft, and their tight, melodic indie pop is enjoyable enough. Unfortunately there’s nothing to distinguish them from a vast mass of similar bands. Unless, that is, you want to count their singer’s obvious infatuation with the vocal style of the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner. At least for the time being, it’s far easier to imagine them being reasonably successful than being of any great interest.

At the tail end of 2006, into early 2007, Wolf & Cub were turning in some of the best gigs you could hope to see: tight, ferocious and built on a precise yet overwhelmingly powerful rhythm section. They weren’t always the most engaging of bands, focusing far more on their music than the audience, but they turned out huge walls of noise that you could dance to. Given all that, nothing would give me more pleasure than being able to tell you that the band are as good as they ever were. They aren’t, yet it doesn’t matter one little bit. The news is all positive.

It’s more than a year now since they lost one of their two drummers, and they’ve only played a handful of gigs in the meantime: this tour, rather more low-key than their last, amounted to just four dates over two weekends. Which isn’t to say they’ve been slacking. There’s a new single to launch – a good one at that, 'One To The Other' – and plenty of new material to test out alongside the new drummer, drafted in after the demise of Artax Mission, another of Adelaide’s psychedelic outfits.

First song out is 'Vessels', and it’s obvious straightaway that the new recruit drops right into the band’s groove. The set is divided more or less equally between old and new material, though the old songs – 'This Mess', 'Steal Their Gold' and 'Thousand Cuts' among them – have been overhauled. Wolf & Cub have changed and grown, and they clearly intend to marry their old intensity to a new-found sense of adventure. Halfway through the second to last song the new drummer comes out from behind his kit and switches to saxophone. It’s a bit low in the mix, but brings something new to their sound: there’s even a brief moment when Talking Heads come to mind.

Considering everything that’s changed – the material, the old arrangements, and the line-up – it’s astonishing that Wolf & Cub are so good after just four gigs back, even if they are still a way short of what they’re capable of. Give them some time to finish off the new album, a month or two on the road, and chances are they’ll be better than ever. Knowing how good they were before, that’s going to be something well worth waiting for.