The Aristocrats/Toehider Review
Saturday, March 1st @ Max Watt’s, Melbourne
Review: Joshua Batten Photos: Studio 150 Photography (Wayne Gunn)
Saturday March 1st, 2025 will surely go down in history as one of the most overbooked days in Melbourne’s music history. During the day, while the Melbourne Guitar Show made its triumphant return at its new home of Melbourne Showgrounds, the Mordialloc Music Festival and St Kilda Music Festival competed for the attention of casual music lovers on the Southside. Then as night fell, while thousands of fans headed off to Marvel Stadium to see Green Day, I headed in the opposite direction to see the other international trio in town – Prog Rock/Jazz Fusion instrumental supergroup The Aristocrats, comprising guitarist Guthrie Govan, drummer Marco Minnemann, and bassist Bryan Beller, currently on tour in support of their latest album ‘Duck’.
It’s been eight years and four months since The Aristocrats last toured Australia as a group, and in that time their reputation only seems to have grown within the fandoms of Jazz, Prog Rock, and Guitar music in general. The last time they were in Melbourne, they played to a sold-out crowd of 250 at the tiny Bendigo Hotel in Collingwood. This time they’ve been upgraded to Max Watt’s, and by the time they eventually take the stage, the venue is packed out with at least 500 music nerds, ready to indulge in the trio’s Zappa-esque brand of musical virtuosity with a sense of humour.
Before this however, we have a support set from Melbourne’s own Prog Rock mastermind Toehider (AKA Mike Mills), performing a rare solo acoustic set. Last year Toehider played a full electric gig opening for Closure in Moscow, so it’s great to see Mills change it up with a stripped-back set, and he seems more relaxed throughout the set compared to his electric gigs, regularly engaging the crowd and giving humorous introductions to each song.
Appearing without his signature beanie for a change, the setlist is focused on Mills’ more folk-influenced tunes from across his catalogue, rather than acoustic reinterpretations of the multi-layered electric Toehider songs. Opening with “Gridlines” which first appeared on the 2009 EP ‘Not Much Of A Man’, Mills immediately holds his own and proves his worth, getting the crowd’s attention with his Jethro Tull inspired folky fingerpicking and powerful vocals. From there, Mills plays a 3-minute excerpt from his 47-minute suite “I Have Little To No Memory Of These Memories”, followed by the Andy McKee-inspired “Now Fly Away”. 2020’s ‘I Like It!’ album is represented with the introspective “Rancorous Heart” and the lyrical tongue-twister “Bats Aren’t Birds”, while the preposterous ballad “Dan Vs Egg” also makes an appearance.
Finally, Mills tells the audience that as an acoustic support that most of the audience has never heard of before, he feels it is his duty to end his set with a cover. Mills has performed numerous acoustic covers on YouTube and his Twitch livestreams, but tonight he has decided to attempt what many though he would never do live – sing Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ in its original key and register, just has he had done in a recording released over ten years prior to YouTube (the video is no longer on the Toehider channel but has been re-uploaded by a fan and is readily available on BandCamp and streaming platforms). The audience is transfixed with smiles on their faces as Mills fully displays his incredible soprano head voice. The set concludes with rapturous applause as Mills has once again won over a new legion of fans.
I couldn’t think of a better support for The Aristocrats than Toehider, as both acts share a similar sense of humour and musical virtuosity. My only complaint would be the absence of the Ducksuite (a medley of Duck-themed cartoon theme tunes). This was a missed opportunity given the subject matter of The Aristocrats’ latest album and branding, but it’s a small nitpick, as Mike Mills never disappoints as a live act. The fact that he is not headlining to at least 500+ crowds across Australia is a crime against his talent, but if the fans wearing Toehider T-shirts scattered throughout the venue are anything to go by, he’s slowly getting his due, continuously growing his dedicated audience.
Following a 15-minute break, the 1960’s instrumental “Swan’s Splashdown” plays over the PA as Govan, Minnemann and Beller walk on stage, pick up their instruments, and take over to play the second half of the song as their warmup. As soon as this is over, Minnemann goes straight into the opening fast shuffle groove of ‘Duck’s opening track “Hey, Where’s My Drink Package?” as Beller welcomes the audience and introduces the band. This is immediately followed by “Aristoclub”, a warped disco tune with catchy hooks and digital staccato.
Beller then explains that Duck is a concept album about an Antarctic Duck on the run from the law in New York City, before handing things over to Govan to introduce the next track, “Sgt Rockhopper”, which he wrote as the theme song for the penguin police officer chasing down the eponymous hero of the story. Despite being an instrumental band, many of The Aristocrats’ songs have a surprisingly detailed backstory, which are delivered through humorous monologues. The three band members, each from different countries, embody their native spirit in introducing the songs – Beller is the all-American MC with a cheery attitude in the face of adversity, Guthrie is a first-class Englishman, delivering his stories with deadpan self-depreciation, and Minnemann is the German clown whose inane antics just happen to be the glue holding the whole thing together. Indeed, it was his own composition, innocently entitled “Sitting With A Duck On A Bay” that sparked the whole album concept in the first place. This piece is one of the highlights of the show, with Govan utilising a Wah-Wah pedal to mimic a Duck voice for the lead melody.
There is a temptation with virtuoso musicians to show off, often at the expense of serving the song, but Beller’s “Texas Crazypants” gets to have its cake and eat it too. The country inspired piece has identifiable A, B and C sections with accessible riffs and licks, before giving way to an extended drum solo from Minnemann, where he combines rock and metal cliches with grooves played over body noise samples. The band’s mascots “Roger” and “Waters”, a rubber pig and chicken respectively, also make their first appearances tonight, as Minnemann intergrates them into the drumkit, ‘playing’ the animals in time with the beat. Ending with a “shave and a haircut” beat, followed by “oink, oink”, the audience roars with approval and the band comes back together to finish the song before indulging in a brief beer break onstage.
If any one member could be considered the ‘frontman’ of the Aristocrats, it’s Govan. His reputation in the guitar world as a ‘slippery yet controlled’ player inspired by the likes of Frank Zappa and Allan Holdsworth is the reason why many of the audience are in attendance tonight. And indeed, Govan is on fire tonight, covering all bases of his guitar neck and leaving no fret untouched. Still, nobody’s perfect, and unfortunately his setup is right underneath a very old air conditioner, which is leaking water, leading to Govan regularly having to wipe his neck down with a towel throughout the night and even quoting “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” during “Flatlands” from the band’s self-titled debut album.
This ‘slow sensitive ballad’ is followed up by a ‘crime against harmony’; the intentionally ugly and angry “Here Come The Builders” (“Venue owners, take note!”, Govan exclaims!), inspired by the construction workers continuing to do their job during lockdown, but would also serve as a perfect soundtrack for Arthur Dent’s thoughts in the first chapter of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, where he too faces a construction-based dilemma. The final song from “Duck” is the balkan inspired “This Is Not Scrotum”, where Govan makes his guitar sound like a violin with controlled vibrato and volume effects.
Just before launching into the final song of the main set, Minnemann’s “Get It Like That”, a keyboard is conspicuously placed in the middle of the stage and is left unaddressed for the first four minutes of the song as the band plays through the form. Given that the Aristocrats rarely have special guest performers with them, thoughts immediately turned to who could possibly join the band, before Beller introduced the obvious choice – local virtuoso and Thirsty Merc frontman Rai Thistlethwayte, who played with Beller in Joe Satriani’s band and recently toured with Satriani and Sammy Hagar on their ‘Best of All Worlds’ Van Halen tribute tour. Thistlethwayte effortlessly and seamlessly fits in with the other members, launching into a rapid electric piano solo with a flurry of notes. If ever there was to be a fourth Aristocrat, Thistlethwayte would be a perfect edition (although he may need to change his name to Rai Ristlewhayte to fit in with everyone else’s alliterative names). Rather than attempt to keep up with the band for the rest of the song, Thistlethwayte leaves the stage immediately after his solo to allow Minnemann and Beller to lead the audience in a barnyard chant, with half the crowd oinking like pigs and the other half clucking like chickens. It perfectly encapsulates the silly spirit of the band who don’t take themselves seriously despite their musical pedigrees and rather use that to spread joy across the world. The band remains onstage for the encore “Desert Tornado” before promising to return again soon.
In the end, the two-hour set comprised only eleven songs, each extended well beyond their original runtime with improvised solos and jams, ensuring that every show is unique. Tonight was a triumph for underground music, as Guthrie Govan, Marco Minnemann, Bryan Beller, and even Michael Mills all lived up to their alliterative names by being musical superheroes – they come along and put on a show, letting their musical menagerie run wild before using their super strength to reign it in, leaving everyone in attendance feeling grateful as they head off to the next town to do it all again.