Die Roten Punkte
Astrid has a joyously foul mouth, a penchant for “soo arty” voluminous sleeves, and a toy drum-kit. Otto’s smear of red lipstick outlines a sadder moue of perpetual discontent. His skinny torso is pinioned in a white strapped straight jacket, and he wields a pint sized, tippex-decorated electric guitar. But this ostensibly German musical duo are about as authentically Berlinisch as a Safeways frankfurter. Embarking on their “Art Rock” tour after two successful studio albums, these Australian comedians skewer alternative pop and rock in saucy, messy style.
Spinal Tap punctured 1980s heavy metal and Flight of the Conchords conquered earnest folk; Die Roten Punkte bill themselves in the same illustrious musical tradition, but their musical targets are a more eclectic band of lo-fi, punk, emo and pop touchstones. Their name means “the red dots” – you couldn’t hope for clearer road markings to the source for much of their satire, The White Stripes. Jack and Meg White delighted in baffling the music press by claiming to be brother and sister, even after their marriage and divorce became common knowledge — it was a way of suggesting their complicity in the grim childhood in American suburbia fetished in songs like “The Hardest Button to Button”, complete with a “backyard/with nothing in it” and a baby brother silenced by ill-defined voodoo antics. Astrid and Otto’s purported childhood outstrips the Stripes to reach Lemony Snicket levels of gothic absurdity. Their parents are killed by a train, or lion (they can’t agree which), launching them on a Babes in the Wood trajectory through unsweetened Black Forests to the bright lights of Berlin.

The banana-protector, affectionately named “bananenhousen” by Otto, is a yellow plastic signifier of his neurotic personality as obvious as any Velvet Underground poster. Daniel Tobias’s clownishly delicate performance is full of minute facial expressions, sulks, and quivering lips. He’s told off by Astrid for his inability to nonchalantly toss off his white-strapped jacket (“but it’s expensive!”), instead neatly folding it on top of a speaker. Clare Bartholomew simmers with a more obvious charisma, mixing relentless sexuality with a schoolmarmish bossiness that rock and roll manchild Otto only tolerates because of his barely-hidden sexual obsession with her. She knows it, and exploits it by flirting outrageously with (read, thrusting her substantial cleavage at) the audience.Their musical satire is similarly agile, quickly leaving lo-fi art punk behind for gleeful, elegantly played and surprisingly catchy numbers including a pitch-perfect Kraftwerk parody about a robot lion, and a Pixies song about a banana-protecting gadget that comes complete with whistling and obligatory audience ooh-ing along to the chorus.
This is an expansive performance, full of physical comedy with none of the controlled finesse usually associated with slapstick – there’s a very real chance of getting slapped in the face by Astrid’s vast, flapping sleeves. Or, as happened to this reviewer, ending up with sticky feet after having a speaker topple off stage onto the space occupied by your drink and feet seconds before.
There are plenty of clever digs at the ludicrous depths of avant-garde wankery bands sink to in search of inspiration for that difficult third album. Under the influence of Brian Eno, Otto and Astrid descend to an underground bunker to listen to the noise of water dripping into a bucket for three maddening months; the ensuing loop pedal soundscape is one of the evening’s highlights. But subtle or refined satire this isn’t.  Clare Bartholomew and Daniel Tobias take the script at a bull-at-a-merch-stall charge. If a few targets are missed, it’s hard not to get swept up in their leonine stampede (or runaway train ride) over decades of sensitive indie-rock sensibilities.
First appeared on Exeunt