Live review from The Underground Winter Festival (冬季音樂祭) Day 2 @ The Fringe Club:
Alive
Goths on the Beaches
Melons
Working Man
Disco Brawl
S.W.E.A.T
Jazz Band
Alexander Poole – Vocals
Keelan Green – Drums
George Silver – String section
Did you know? The most important member of any band is not the singer. It’s not the guitarist or the rhythm section either. It’s not the producer, or the composer, or the sound mixing guy, or the marketing guy. It’s actually….
…the houseplant.
Or at least that’s what the band’s ‘string section’ (George Silver) said anyway. And to their credit, the googly-eyed houseplant sitting on the right hand corner of the stage had an incredibly magnetic presence.
The plant had been growing for a while. Just last year, Houseplants won the 2025 Battle Of The Bands at the Aftermath, and they continue to photosynthesize on stages across Hong Kong.
And growing seems to be a theme with the fancy four fauna. Fully dressed in nice colourful suits when they first walk on stage, the plant members take off pieces of clothing with every song, becoming more organic, more au naturale (though they never quite go birthday suit, which might be a blessing). George ended up with a tie around his head, lead singer Alexander Pool had sweat shining like he ran through a forest, and drummer Keelan Green was definitely hiding something as hard and rhythmic as his drumming behind his kit.
While their performance was…something…their music was something else. Clearly Britpunk inspired, their tunes were funny, lively and relatable. Working Man, all about the eternal work grind was relatable to 99% of the audience; Melons, about a “70 year old friend of my dad living in Thailand” going to the market and commenting on the melons, was maybe relatable to a large number of the audience who aren’t willing to admit it. Disco Brawl, meanwhile, was a very fun interactive piece with lots of call and response, and Alexander being carried around by the audience. All in all, lots of good old fashioned pub fun!
A final shout out must be given to their last number Jazz Band which was dedicated to Mark Swinkels (who ran Creative Mornings HK) who tragically lost his life in a recent accident; “If you’re going to move to any song tonight, move to this song. Let’s light up this room thank you”.
And so I moved. And so did everybody else in the Dairy.
-Cyril Ma
Live Review from Kowloon Thunder:
Alive
Disco Brawl
Working man
Chaise Longue (Wet leg Cover)
Goths on the beaches
‘Untitled’ new song
Melons
S.W.E.A.T
Jazz Band
A 3-piece outfit in the finest tradition of indie rock, the band graced the Kowloon Thunder show with an entertaining set of… well, punk rock. As a 3-piece, the band had no bass player; however, the low register was more than adequately made up by clever use of guitar setup and effects, so all ranges were covered. While most of the set was in the classic punk tradition, one song particularly stood out – Disco Brawl, which, as the name suggests, had a very disco groove to it. The fusion of disco and punk made the song very entertaining. The band had a really good stage presence and interacted very effectively with its audience – including one new song which they had not even named, asking the audience to name it. It ended up being called “Don’t Remember.”
Overall, the band played a tight set, well delivered and very entertaining.
– Hazel-Rah
