I think it's appropriate to start with some wise words from one of Austraya's finest.
It was at the dark bar of the Old Fitzroy Hotel, lumped in the wildest corner of Wooloomoolloo - a pub seemingly blooming with blues and bottomless booze - that we had the rare opportunity to witness this beast and his beauty, the lovely (and Irish) Cara Robinson.
For weeks locals had been asking each other if they were there 'last time' Hat landed. Whether your answer was ye or nay, you would be meet by a shake of the head, swollen with silence and respect. So it was that we trooped on down to the perhaps eponymous Old Fitz, tripping over the cats and the rats, to see what Hat had to offer.
[I was even there early enough to see what they had for dinner. Hat enquired whether the fried rice was "chink food", or whether the kitchen served pub food, "pies an' sausage rolls 'n that?'. Eschewing the steak and schnitzel, he went for the fried rice. With chicken. Good call. Cara, on the other hand, needed only a simple cuppa tea, a request met with hesitation by a bar has never served anything weaker than light beer nor fancier than a gin and tonic. Milk and hot water? Some confused collaboration with the adjacent restaurant provided the boiled water, while the bargirl found a bag of Bushells in her handbag.]
Before long, the place was packed. People were leaning in from the outside windows to grab an ear and eyeful of the much anticipated duo. Hat was armed with the promised beard, and Cara laden with a metal bib (perhaps to compensate for or own lack of face-shrub). And they were off - not the rip-stompin', rib-tearin' charge I was expecting, but a restrained and delicate ballad dominated by Cara's Celtic warble.
I won't give you an entire run-down, both because I've already told you what they had for dinner, and because I started to get drunk. The pace gently increased to a beer-break; before exploding into the second half of the set with the grinding 'Freddie Spaghetti'.
Hat Fitz' growl seemed to crawl loud out of his big old chest and into your every orifice, worming through your arteries and straight into yer heart. Then yer heart starts pumpin, it hears the the banging and clanging of Cara's metalchest, it hears the racing thump of both of them stomping double-time; and then suddenly the crowd is no longer an obscuring, nodding silhouette but an open sea, churning and spilling and howling all over. His fingers blur riffs, flying up and down the neck like an itchy rash. Latecomers stand agog in the doorway, wondering what on earth they've stumbled into.
In the end, it was a debaucherous, sweat-hoggled world-warp. Amongst all of Sydney's post-rock sincerity, indie-pop-electro faggery and apocalyptic nu-glitch; Hat Fitz stood tall as a dirty obelisk of talent in tame and tidy garden. He's fucking awesome, and it was easily agreed that it was the best show we'd all seen that year. And it was free, and hadn't been talked about on some scene blog with surreptitious hyperlinks.
So ironically, this is our first blog post. Check out the hyperlink - (if you can find it!!!!!)
PS Despite the image conveyed by the above video, Hat Fitz no longer touches a drop. So says Bretto, the similarly hairy manager at the pub. Has Beauty perhaps tamed the Beast? Given the nature of the show, I'm going to go with 'no'.
Also, their new album is called Beauty 'N The Beast. Hence the dumb lines. Get it here.
Woo! Go 'ave a slurrrp (just don't slit ya gill).
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