Thursday night was my second time at the Beck’s Festival Bar at this year’s Sydney Festival. I’d already experienced a dance music night at Picnic with DJ Harvey the previous week. Now, here to check out a gig by legendary post-punk progenitors Wire, I was going to see what kind of venue for indie the Festival Bar would shape up to be.

Pretty great, it turns out. And why not? As I’ve mentioned before, it’s just a great place to be overall. There’s not much bad to say about an open-air venue right in the heart of town, with the park’s trees and the city lights framing the background. There’s even halfway decent food there. If only you could get some sort of beer besides Beck’s…

When I arrived, HEALTH (all capitals, no trick spelling!), billed as a “noise rock” outfit from Los Angeles, was already on. I’d not heard of them, and did not know what to expect. And, for the first few minutes while I was in the courtyard, grabbing a beer and settling in, I was less than impressed. There was a dirge-like din emanating from the marquee, a sort of sludgy racket deflecting off the brick walls of the Barracks, sounding like Grinderman on cough syrup. From time to time an androgynous howl would overtake the murky noise. Didn’t sound promising. I wondered what they were thinking booking such a howler of an opening act (literally) for a band as venerated as Wire.

But I noticed the decent-sized crowd was pretty intrigued. I figured I would step into the marquee and get a closer look just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. And maybe you can see this coming if you’re already hip to the HEALTH mystique – but, boy, was I wrong.

Underneath the marquee, away from the bad echoes, what had seemed like noise consolidated into a really fascinating and quite melodic drone. Four band members were onstage, generating layer upon layer of sound with guitars and keyboards and various digital processors. The total effect was somehow brutal and delicate at once, a wild, oceanic sound, anchored by furiously polyrhythmic drumming. I heard a lot of influences in the sound: the primal drone-metal of Kyuss and Godflesh, Blond Redhead’s ethereal indie, Stereolab’s keyboard-driven art-rock. But really it was its own thing and hard to classify.

And their stage presence was terrific: the androgynous vocals were originating from a short bloke hiding under an oversized baseball cap – he looked like a teenaged skater. But his mostly wordless wailing was seriously powerful, strangely beautiful. Meanwhile, the tall, long-haired guitarist was the real performer: dancing like a shaman, falling down and getting up again, letting the music carry him.

I was well intrigued, and HEALTH may have made a new fan. (Note: it was not until a few days later that I found out my second-favourite Crystal Castles track Crimewave is a collaboration with HEALTH. No wonder!)

Between sets, my friends and I joked that Wire now had a lot to live up to – that they were in danger of being upstaged by their opener. But I had no idea it might actually happen.

Look, Wire’s legacy is untouchable: their stripped-down-yet-complex art-rock attack, filtered into short sharp bursts of melody on crucial albums like 1977’s Pink Flag, was a major influence on just about every band we all love. And they were messing with keyboards and electronics before most of today’s indie-tronica musicians were even born. So it’s no disrespect – but the whole point of a live gig is, what do you have for us right now? It’s a tricky thing. You can go the route of touring like a mummified museum piece, playing a classic album from start to finish and selling T-shirts to your fans’ kids. Or you can try to do something new and relevant.

I’ve got to hand it to Wire for utterly neglecting the first path – I don’t think selling out was ever on the agenda for them. And sure enough, when they came onstage, they had a workmanlike demeanour, as if to say; just think of us as any other band.

Unfortunately, on this night anyway, their sound sort of fell right through the cracks. After the charisma and dramatic atmosphere of HEALTH, Wire had all the stage presence of a bar band. There’s nothing wrong with just humbly playing your instruments without jumping around or smashing equipment – in fact, I often prefer that. But when I set aside the thought that I was watching a legend of 35 years, there was not much to sonically engage me.

To be fair, they often sounded great: the twin guitars would build into a distorted, buzzing storm of sound, the rhythm would kick up some dust, heads in the crowd would be nodding in appreciation, and I would think this is about to go somewhere. But then new songs like Smash and Clay (from the new album Red Barked Tree ) would go a little flat, sounding like any other new indie stuff. Eventually the feeling of disappointment settled in to stay. There was nothing particularly wrong – it was all good music. Just not the primal power that I was hoping for.

I get the feeling I’d like to see Wire in a small club, to see them just play their edgy, unpretentious music and let it be what it is. But I think an outdoor setting like the Festival Bar creates the expectation of something really epic and memorable, and I don’t think they were up for that. If you were closer to the stage and felt something different, or are more tuned in with their new music, feel free to let me have it. But the band on my mind as I left that night was HEALTH.