A crowd that cares, but not about the band: Opus Kink at Duck and Dive festival
Music works both ways; it can be attached to good memories and bad. In my case, Opus Kink fell into the latter through no fault of their own. An ex-boyfriend was obsessed, saw them as god’s gift, saw himself as a disciple. I’ve never managed to catch a gig, barely even heard a tune, despite their name being thrown around over and over, despite hearing the buzz over their shows and singles, I’d simply always missed them, then avoided them, but now, I’m open. I want to be won over.
After seeing that they were headlining Signature Brew at a day festival close to my house, I recognised an opportunity. Here was a place to make amends, to understand the love and maybe even get involved myself; enter the cult, appreciate the devotion.
The support acts helped as Yaang are never not a good time, launching into a set of all tunes that never let the energy drop. It was a busy day festival, put on by Duck and Dive, but that means it runs the risk of not letting acts soundcheck, making tease out the problems live. Yaang manage through a few issues, so do bands like Dead Air and Hot Girl, who impressed before.
But then, as Opus Kink hit the stage, with their cult pushing forward, they didn’t even manage two songs before technical issues cut them off. The keyboard isn’t working, yet from where we were all standing, no one would have guessed. It was one of those weird on-stage versus off-stage moments, and it lasted 15 minutes or so. And it’s fine, these things happen. If anything, the venue style it off the best I’ve ever seen a team of staff do; while one guy is quite literally climbing along the rafters, bringing the band a new power cord, the bar staff carry over a tray of shots and the band’s own custom stout, brewed for today. Spirits stay high – but that’s actually the problem, the spirits.
During the gap, I use the chance to be a good journalist. In the first song, I was distracted by one finger. He didn’t waste a second before opening up a mosh pit, forcing the crowd into chaos simply because he was being chaotic himself, bouncing around the packed floor, bumping bodies, swiftly tacking his top off and spinning it around his head, despite the fact that the song wasn’t even all that rowdy. Onstage, the band were trying to build tension, in the crowd, their own fans weren’t given them the chance.
This guy was frantic, buzzing, so i went over – “Hey! Could i ask you a few questions about Opus? Why do you like them so much? Have you seen them before?” He looks at me, completely confused – “I’m American, I’ve never heard of them.” He spent the rest of the set behaving all the same, and I couldn’t stop watching as he missed drops, reacted to imaginary ones, and tried to open mosh pits during quiet moments. I looked at him and thought one thing – “I see why my ex loved these shows so much”, and I meant it in a derogatory way.
But the strange thing is that none of that is the band’s fault. In moments where I could pull my eyes away from their crowd, who seemed to be ten times more energised than the music itself, the group are tight and interesting. Jed Morgan’s saxophone playing, and Jack Banjo Courtney on trumpet make this something special, punctuating melodies with flair, taking something simple and making it endlessly more intriguing. Up front, it’s nice seeing Angus Rogers step into the man-possessed frontman role, having seen him previously read his poetry. His lyrics have the same flair, clearly written by a man with a solid and natural grasp on storytelling and phrasings.
But it’s like no one cares. The band could play Twinkle Twinkle ten times over, and as long as the tempo was up, the crowd would lose their mind. After hearing that the leader of the pack wasn’t even familiar with the group, but was giving it all that with his back mostly turned to them, I couldn’t shake this one question: Do these people actually like the band’s music? Or do they like the reputation that Opus Kink shows is crazy, that they’re a place to jump up and down, shove a few people?
There’s worth in that, don’t get me wrong. Bands build empires on that, like Sex Pistols back in their day, or Fat Dog’s big venues but relatively low streaming stats in comparison. But the weirdness here is that Opus Kink isn’t making music like that. While Fat Dog openly say their music is body music, not meant to be thought about, not really meant for headphones or home speakers, Opus Kink feels like the opposite. Listening to them properly this morning, I can hear the effort and the layers, I can recognise how the band were trying to build it live.
Sure, there is definitely that element of purposeful crowd hype, like the build-up jig section in ‘St Paul of Tarantulas’, but there’s still the traces of care and consideration, or vision and craft, and of a band who might want more than a crowd who turn their back, facing themselves instead as they launch into mosh pits, screaming and cheering for themselves as they’re too busy to realise their wasn’t even a drop. It’s a crowd that dances to their own music but have crowned Opus Kink as their leaders regardless.
It’s an ex-boyfriend crowd through and through – a man talking endlessly and only about himself, and then saying, “Wow, I’ve never connected with anyone like this.” The band are just the soundtrack playing in the back.
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