Waiting For Guinness are not, as you might imagine from their name, a trad Irish folk outfit, but a 7 piece outfit from Sydney who play an eclectic repertoire of gypsy, cabaret, swing-jazz and vaudeville flavours. They have been diversely described as: Garage Cabaret, Gypsy Punk, Inebriated Folk and Rad Jazz. If you can imagine Captain Matchbox meeting Monsieur Camembert down a dark alleyway with the Cat Empire hovering down the end, you will have some idea of what WFG sound like. The ensemble does takes on Berlin Cabaret, Spaghetti Western and Gypsy Jazz-styled originals with a combination of high energy and humour , perhaps betraying the fact that their origins are in busking.
The Show takes a little while to warm up and it finishes on a surprisingly sombre note via a sad instrumental entitled
The Ageing Drifter, but there’s plenty of snap, crackle and pop in between.
Radio Novgorod features wild violins and sax solos;
Rocinante has a slightly seedy Latin meets Andean groove (early Sergio Mendes perhaps);
El Cascabel is Mariachi meets Merengue;
Los Mariachi very much the former.