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Death Valley Girls @ The Moth (Live Review)

 

 

 

Death Valley Girls

@ The Moth

Words & pics by Captain Stavros

You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.  A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.  That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, The Island In The Sky winter tour, with your hosts Death Valley Girls, The MOTH Club and yours truly, Captain Stavros. 

Hailed as LA’s very own Mystic-Rock-Mainstay and fresh off the heels of their latest release, the aforementioned Island in the Sky.  A thinly veiled albeit creepier version Themyscira, a bizzarro Themyscira if you will.  Where instead of Amazonians, we’ll find Bonnie Bloomgarden giving the audience the business so hard she’ll have to lift her colonial prairie dress to her face to smear it all about, along with her deadly makeup, trying to get all the gunky sweat off her witchy mug to keep the wildest set of the year, thus far, going.

But who are these ghoulish zephyrs from parts Cal-ah-4-neye-eh?  That, in and of itself, is a tricky thought exercise.  Ever hear of The Ship of Theseus?.  Essentially, the story goes, if you swap out all or most of the original parts, is the thing still the same thing it started off as?  DVG has seen a fair bit of turnover through the years but original founding member Larry Schemel and Bonnie Bloomgarden, long-time vocalist, are still the beating heart of the band and I’d argue that, like Robocop, swapping out pesky human parts for shiny mechanically powered new ones arguably makes a thing even better than it was before.

The current roster shining down on us from the MOTH’s stage this evening was composed of:

Rikki Styxx – can you imagine if this was her name from birth?  Fated to play the drums, and boy-howdy, did she ever?  With a Cheshire cat smile throughout.  She reminded me of the way a young pyromaniac stares with intensity as the flames she’s nursing rise and consume.  Sub the flames for her sticks crashing into the snare, and you’ve got an alarmingly satisfying experience.  

Bonnie Bloomgarden – charismatic frontwoman and fallen Disney Princess who, at times, is possessed by the music itself so much so that when she bends backwards.  She could be confused for someone with a terrible case of scoliosis or a lost limbo contestant.  At one point, she broke out into a make-shift gospel whilst on the keys.  I was in stitches. 

Larry Schemel, founding member who now is more of an apparition wiggling around stage right in the shadows.  

Last but not least, Samantha Westervelt – bassist, singer, actor and Saturn Bar t-shirt wearer extraordinaire.  With “Liquor in the front, Poker in the rear” plastered across it and sporting a “Born Free” electric guitar strap.  I’d get to know her perhaps more personally than most in the audience that evening as her bass’ headstock rapped against my knuckles like a school teachers' ruler as I tried to take photos throughout the set.  Worth it.

For some reason, I’ve written ‘steam roller energy’ in my gig notes and, although those are all words I understand, they make no sense to me and probably never did.  On that tip though, much in the same vein of Ty Segall and King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard, Death Valley Girls seemingly have all the energy in the world for putting out an album every Friday to help us make it through the weekend.  Their latest is album seven.  They’ve also pumped out eight singles/EPs in 10 years, Jiminy Jillikers!  I’ll say this about them, they do not accept the laws of thermodynamics.  They are a perpetual motion machine with no end in sight; after 10 years, they’re still ‘givn’er’, these lot are a quagmire.

Speaking of conjuring shit up, the set starts off with ‘ABRE Camino’, a methodical slowburn that sounds like a record being played backwards.  Ouija vibes man, but soon their set turns mani(a)c with ‘Street Justice’ from 2018’s Dark Rains.  At this point, the audience has been completely possesed by Bloomgarden’s signature vocals, which reach maximum hypnosis when Westervelt chimes in chorus, banshee-esque vibes.

A few songs down the road, Bloomgarden starts coming at us with a few gems between tracks; “You don't know how lucky you are to have this place. We don't have a place like this in our town.”  I dunno lady, certainly we are lucky to have The MOTH (albeit with iconic ‘All children to be off the Dance Floor by 9:30pm’ sign now missing?  How long have I been out for?) but if Bukowski, Stanton or Morrison heard this, they’d probably be spinning in their booze soaked and drug addled graves.  I could easily see them playing at The Mint in LA.  I did especially appreciate, “If you think being a man is cool, then I'm a man too”, introing 2016’s Glow In The Dark track.  Not too long after which, Bloomgarden has a back and forth with a few audience members before diving into the crowd, booths and everywhere in between.  No one was safe but I’m quite confident nobody at that point cared to be.  

They return for an encore rocking ‘Electric High’ from Street Venom, which brought the fucking house down thanks to Rikki Styxx.  I think my friend BobaDebz summed it up best with her review though, “I’m trying to recall exactly what I said because I genuinely want to help you. I remember mentioning about the drummer her Cheshire Cat grin, how insane the last song was and how that made me cream my pants. I honestly can’t recall anything else other than how totally fucking awesome she was.” - BobaDebz

Death Valley Girls are currently touring Europe, wouldn’t miss ‘em if I were you.

 

 

 

 

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Italia 90 @ The 100 Club (Live Review)

Italia 90

@ The 100 Club, London

Words and pics by Captain Stavros

I’ll never associate the idea of heading down Oxford High Street and having a good time but, like the ubiquitous free-living organism Bacteria, even the polished facade of the (failing) Great British High Street has a few spit-and-sawdust sanctums left in and around it’s crevices.  This fine evening after a pit stop at one said establishment, Bradley’s Spanish Bar to wet our beak, we head to another The 100 Club to catch Italia 90’s album release party for their latest cut, Living Human Treasure.

Our introduction to this raw and unapologetically political outfit months back was two-fold and quite by chance.  While at the Oslo covering label mate Flossing’s gig, which was an absolute banger by the way, we were introduced to Renton lookalike, Alfie; Italia 90’s frontman.  A serendipitous happenstance, as earlier in the day we were enjoying the new single, ‘Leisure Activities’.  Soft spoken, in contrast with his on-stage persona, his attention’s split between a World Cup match on the big-screen and receiving my compliments on his work.  Carelessly, he invites me to their album release which we slightly, only slightly, accept a tad bit over zealously.  This just about brings us up to speed, which is to say descending the stairs of The 100 Club.

We make our entrance to Alfie being chastised for chatting during the support act’s set.  Press Release’s drummer, Liv Wynter is having none of it.  For a notoriously hard to search band, they’re quite outspoken and, upon reflection, perhaps one to keep an eye on.  They’re followed by Scrounge, a post-punk duo that reminds us of an early Blood Red Shoes.  With the stage amply warmed up and with a full house an extended cabinet of seven band members (strings/keys/saxs and guest singers) march on stage to a Roman Gladiator ballad blasting through the house speakers. Uh-oh.

Although named Italia 90, perhaps they’d consider rebranding to Bosnia in the 90s because as ‘Cut’, the first track of the set and album, kicks off I’m catching a fuckload of shrapnel in the way of elbows and knees across my frail and withering frame.  The crowd has completely kicked off, literally.  The tune lurks like a dog pressed against a wall.  Its shadow spreads across the crowd as whoops and hollers ripple back to the stage.  The album is played in consecutive fashion with ‘Leisure Activities’ continuing to stoke the flames, I may add, with zero consideration for the absolute battering yours truly is receiving.

‘Magdalene’ is next and comes smashing over us much like the fists are descending upon my skull by windmilling maniacs in the pit.  A George Costanza lookalike to the right of me, after seeing me smashed and splattered across the stage, assures me he’s “got me” as I brace myself against a PA back into a standing position, but soon he too is also swallowed up by the relentless revellers.  Moments later, a redhead in a cocktail dress a full foot taller than me in fingerless leather gloves apologizes for elbowing me in the neck.  She smiles with a thin stream of blood reflecting back at me from between her teeth, the early stages of gum disease or yours truly falling in love?  Will I live long enough to find out? ‘Competition (Cawm Paw Tishun)’, an oldie but a goodie, is a longer tune which thankfully pacifies the crowd just long enough for me to catch my breath and fashion a tourniquet for my arm out of my backpack’s strap.

After taking a knee for a moment, Italia 90 roars back to full steam with ‘New Factory’, a tune like a car out of control on a motorway weaving between lanes.  The crowd’s jubilant response is a single undulating wave smashing against the rocks, or in this case myself once more being dashed across the stage.  A boot has now found its way across my face from a sole stage diver, none other than the George Costanza lookalike who’d promised to retain my virtue.  Up next, ‘The Mumsent Mambo’ introduces guest singer Sam the Plumber, who spits a few bars.  I'd later be introduced to Sam by way of more elbows and shoulders in the pit as he shared the mic next to me with Alfie off stage.  Sam’s hot, steamy breath splashed back at me, you wouldn’t have thought it, but it was a genuinely pleasant experience. Smelt of cloves, quite refreshing.

The last few memorable tracks to follow were ‘Golgotha’, one that Alfie acknowledges as a commercial weak moment but one that he and the band are actually quite proud of.  I agree, maybe not commercially viable, but great lyrics.  Speaking of lyrics, ‘Does He Dream?’, is perhaps my favourite of the set so far; “Intervenes stimulation/ production line titillation./ Mandatory consumption/ responses required”.  ‘Tales from Beyond’ was the last song we heard as we exited the pit, there would be one more, ‘Harmony’, followed by two more in the encore.  ‘Tales from Beyond’ had great flow and energy, not to mention this song was where Alfie’s talent as a vocalist really blasted through.  For us, this is where the set (should’ve) ended.

Speaking to Stoya, The 100’s bar manager, between sets about why so many cups were hanging across nearly all the taps on the bar he confided in us.  “I hate advertising something I can’t sell, if you see it, we want to sell it, but we just can’t get the product.  We’ve been struggling for weeks”.  The product in this case being beer.  This reminded us of the precarious position music found itself in not too long ago between 2020-2022.  Being able to get music but not at a venue, it just isn’t the same.  Italia 90’s show left us weak in the knees, in more ways than one, reminding us not take these experiences for granted and that the pain is temporary (in most cases) so get out there.  Italia 90s album is out now and they’ll be swinging by London way again soon, wouldn’t miss either if we were you.

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Skinny Pelembe @ The Social (Live Review)

Skinny Pelembe

@ The Social, London

Words & pics by Captain Stavros

Here’s the Skinny, sometimes bad feels good.  We’re watching a captivating set rounded off with ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’, a track tilting the spotlight in the direction of xenophobic ideologies.  So, why is my head carelessly bopping back and forth to the beat?  Why isn’t anyone around us cringing?  Simple, everyone here understands music is confrontational.  Perhaps that’s an over simplification.  It takes a bit of finesse to pull this off as seamlessly, and as enjoyably, as we’re witnessing here tonight but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.  Let’s dive deeper into Skinny Pelembe, what he’s saying and how he’s saying it but, before we do, let’s rewind a few days.

As usual we find our inbox which is, more often than we’d like to admit, neglected and overflowing.  It’s bursting at the seams with a multitude of great new Artists and Singles looking for exposure, a break, or just a reminder that they exist.  Shuffling through the heap, something tugs us towards a new one, ‘Oh, Silly George’ by a yet unheard of (only by us because apparently there’s much critical acclaim regarding) Skinny Pelembe, by day known as Doya Beardmore.

Doya’s new single, and set, has got us by the ear from the get-go but by the third song’s intro, ‘4 Year Curse’, he has my respect.  “Can we get the pleasantries out of the way”, as he begins to introduce the band, “cause I’m not into that. Let’s imagine we’re at the end of the gig thinking, that was mega!”.  Spoiler, it would be and it was.  A refreshingly unapologetic, let’s cut the shit, style that’s a welcome break from the usual beg-pardon of the daily English standard is still as charmingly disarming as it is self-reflexive.  What a breath of fresh air.

It’s quite difficult for us to pin down what’s going on onstage, not because we’re in our cups, this set has a children of Hamelin vibe to it.  The cymbals tickle our eardrums with their loosey-goosey, jazzy vibes, handing over to a Roland/Moog synths for further tenderizing.  They relentlessly rattle our skeletons within their fleshy cages.  Finally, the Maestro compels us with his elliptical forms of language, frantic genre defiant with elements of hip-hop, psych-rock, rap, and spoken word, wrapped in wavy surfy/cowboy twangy guitar (a-la-Tarantino) tunes right in to our frequencies.

The set was a stand-alone winner, the first of the year (sorry Peel Dream Magazine), but why?  Well, for starters there was a sort of restrained madness to it, like Cujo wearing a muzzle.  Frothy blind rage only tentatively being restrained behind a thin leather strap, in this case a guitar strap.  The same restraint, to be fair, was written all over Doya’s face when his music hit the mark sending woops and howls throughout the audience, keeping the well-deserved smirk on his face from peeling away into a full-blown smile.

Final thoughts?  A mind and music with the complexity and elegance of fractals.  As unimaginable as it was for my mind to fathom its conception, it's still 100% approachable and docks effortlessly and automatically.  Beware, as enjoyable and easy to move to as it is to listen to, a darkness lurks just beneath the tunes that is sorrowful when you pull the music from the lyrics, buried just below the surface like the pistachio filling in a cannoli.  How then, do such hard and bitter truths that form the narrative of this work get swallowed up along with moral obligations to our fellow human by an audience, in a word?  Craftsmanship.  Wavy tunes let the subconscious do the heavy lifting.  I’ll leave you with Doya’s final words of the night to his audience.  The feeling of the first album is all shiny and fun, but it’s the second album that reminds people that they should still give a fuck.

 

 

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Flossing @ The Oslo (Live Review)


Flossing

The Oslo, London

Words & pics by Captain Stavros

Take everything you may think you know about Flossing and throw it out the window.  Bleeding gums, backpack kid dance, peacocking all of it.  Nothing is as it seems anymore, was it ever?  This article?  Not an article, more a sandwich of thoughts.  Flossing?  Not about hygiene any longer.  The Oslo isn’t even that Nordic place as far as we’re concerned, it’s a London PLACE!  Tie a waxy taped bow around your finger or you might just lose your mind and need to fetch the back-up.  We’re diving into a two-piece straight outta Brooklyn.

I’m 17 stories up above central L.  Watching a plane float by, presumably heading towards LCY, it could just as easily be heading into infinity along with my train of thought.  Either it, or I, are so close to each other that I feel I can swat it down.  I sort of want to.  Why the prelude?  Because spirits were even higher two stories up last Thursday watching Flossing slap the shit out of a set down at The Oslo.  Leaning against the bar, I nearly lean into J Dangerous of Italia 90, watching the game.  We chat about Flossing while waiting for the industrial and perforated dark duo to take the stage.  The bands are label mates and we learn in February, Italia 90’ll be cleaning up at the 100 Club.  More on that in February though.  Tonight, was about a should-be headliner.

Heather, A.K.A. Flossing, stepped out onto the stage just after 8:30 with a light-footed confidence soon followed by beats sparing no heft.  Although up until recently residing somewhere between a fill light and the spotlight (BODEGA/The Wants), a voice with a presence pierces through on this particular eve.  Their music, rhetoric, lifestyle, identity, and mantra is, in a word, EXPLOSIVE.  Elle’s got their boot heel on the neck of the fascists with a -cut the shit out- sound coming for you next.  Elle is all about getting between your bones and seeing what you pull out.  Feelings of frustration and yearning permeate the ominous-yet-buoyant, where she admits - “I am both scared of and intrigued by the deviant nature of man.

Although soundcheck goes well, the mic hasn’t gotten the message.  Completely unfazed, Heather weathers the glitch breathing life, along with a pulsing wail, into their mic.  The howls reverberate off the walls like a banshee.  Stunned, watching this, my thoughts scream there is something absolutely raw and fearless about a two piece on stage.  The last time we caught a two piece on this very stage was circa 2017 when Laura and Steven, A.K.A. Blood Red Shoes woke the entire East Side up with their set.  Tonight, Elle’s music hit the mark, blasting drums, synthesonic-sega-16 bit-mega-drive wrapped in a nod to Reznor, but although their performance shook the audience, something harder cut deeper, something intangible got inside me, begging for further investigation.

When ‘Switch’ dropped in 2021, it got a lot of recognition.  It also got heaps during their set.  What caught my ear was, “I won’t bite, but I like getting bitten every now and then. You’re a lot like me, do you see yourself inside me?”  During our deep dive, we came across some barnacles and a chin-wag from yesteryear; ‘I’m not attacking people, I am discovering who I am again. Confidence, or a lack there of, was a huge factor, it is for a lot of women, we are told to be quiet and demure and not be assertive or aggressive, and we have literally been bred this way. Any women who spoke out or revolted in the past were murdered or abused to the point of silence.”

Throughout the gig there was something deeply profound that resonated inside us that we couldn’t quite put our finger on.  Even a boring cis-dude like myself could pick up on the subtle subtext.  Yes, the music was awesome, the lyrics were a playful balance between comical, introspective, and murderous, and the drum-kit/bass combo absolutely smashed but there was more to it than that.  Watching Heather own that stage, having learned that less than three years ago they were gripped by major insecurities surrounding their identity, musical ambitions stunted in former male bandmate’s shadows, were owned seemingly seamlessly on stage nursing a budding and successful solo career, is nothing short of inspirational.  Watching Heather, Flossing, Elle shed the skin of her past life is uplifting in these bleakest, for some, of times.  Identifying with their struggles on a journey of personal development shouting, ‘I can do it, so can you!’  bridges the gap between us as people.  It helps you walk away from their performance, if only for a fleeting moment, as whole and energized with whisps of hope.  Flossing began their journey, solo, but now they’re far from alone anymore, and if you’re reading this, neither are you. Touring in the UK resumes in February 2023, don’t miss it.

 

 

 

 

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Keg @The 100 Club (Live Review)

Keg

The 100 Club, London

Words and Pictures by Captain Stavros

12 years ago, I visited London on a lark.  Outside what used to be the Top Shop on Oxford Street, and is now I don’t care what, I saw what would be the weirdest and second most memorable instrument being played by a human being.  It was a comically large road cone, through which a rough sleeper was humming Christmas tunes.  Periodically, and without seemingly any pattern at all, he would stop humming.  Passers-by would drop loose change in front of him from time to time and he would start up again like a child’s novelty piggy-bank.  No one would ever know if the change was meant to buy his silence or encourage this budding young talent.  Fast-forward nearly 12 years to the day and the road cone would metamorphosis into a conch.

We’re probably getting a bit ahead of ourselves here though, let me introduce the subject in review.  Keg, the band, who’re spreading across the land like an inky liquid in water.  Probably a band, and an experience, best described using Trainline’s decade old commercial as a visual reference.  Completely bonkers and seemingly existing without purpose other than pure enjoyment.  It is the blusteriest day in recent memory at the foot of The 100 Club; a venue I’d always dreamt of going to but never quite found the opportunity to do so.  At the foot of the steps in a rather unassuming entrance, the stench of a million dropped pints wafts up from between rotten floorboards.  I get goose pimples instantly.  Finding my way into the belly of the beast, it’s better than I could ever imagine.  The layout is brilliant, bars on either end, huge stage in the middle.

I don’t want to over-sell Keg but they are probably the most exciting band I’ve seen live this year.  The last time I got this feeling was seeing Squid play in 2018 or ‘19 and thinking, ‘Wow, they’ve got my full attention’.  You can’t help but feel your eyes locked in when all seven members are on stage, of Keg I mean, mainly because they don’t allow you to look away.  If it’s not a trumpet trumpeting precious millimetres from the audience’s eye socket holes, it’s a god damned conch being played.  Albert, vocals, meanwhile is breaking into downward facing dog, getting up and doing a rendition of Conan O’Brien’s String Dance.

The entire audience has, by this point, completely dissolved into something out of Lord of the Flies.  In other words, completely feral in an instant.  A mob rushes the stage and begins throwing themselves off it.  Next to me, a young man leaves the pit in a bloodied white t-shirt.  The woman next to me, in hysterics, has completely lost her mind and helps drive the spell we’re all under by constantly yelling ‘TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT’ in rhythmic intervals to, seemingly, no one at all.  Poor Piggy, our tether to a civilized society is unceremoniously severed but with so much pizazz!  You can’t help but feel a sense of endearment for a band with song titles like ‘Kids’ though, am I right?  Especially when it’s a bait and switch, “shitty kids, shit, shit kids”, rings out and over me like a ‘Wave of Mutilation’.

I was a fan of Keg before walking into this gig but I’m a fair-weather fan.  If you ain’t got the chops live, bvvvvvvvvrp, I’m gone buddy.  I was going nowhere fast this evening, in more ways than one!  These people in the crowd however, made up of half St Martin’s College, half indie sleaze, knew all the lyrics to every song and sung it back to them.  That’s commitment, they were diehard.  Keg hasn’t even released a full-length LP yet but still managed to play an hour set with a tease of Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’, which would’ve fucking slayed as an encore in my opinion.

When I walked in, I went straight to the merch booth to get a shirt, which was almost impossible as no one was manning the booth.  I had to get Butch Kassidy’s Theon (also a dark horse to keep your eye on, reminds me a lot of Black Country New Road) to drag over Keg’s Will Wiffen (you can’t make this shit up, what a name!) for me to buy a shirt.  He seemed genuinely surprised I even wanted to do so, bless.  By the time the last song was played, lasting 10 minutes at least with plenty of indescribable insanity, the booth was overrun with new and old fans alike.  If you too feel like completely losing all inhibitions and having an absolute whale of a time, do not miss out.  Buy the ticket, take the ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tan Cologne @ The Betsy Trotwood

Tan Cologne

@ The Betsy Trotwood

Words and pics by Captain Stavros

As the days inevitably melt away, the afternoon’s light begins dimming sooner with each passing moment.  After work, the darkness gains on me.  Sooner than I’d like, I’m bathed in the dusk’s light.  Today felt like the kind of day where you just wanted to pick a direction and ride off into it.  An excellent way to start a long weekend, to be sure.  The horizon might’ve been a sight to behold but in a crowded city that’s ‘back to normal’, when standing on the pavement near Faringdon, you’ve got zero chance of seeing that thin line where the earth meets the sky.  You might as well be in a pit.  Today felt like a pit day.  It was the pits.  When this happens from time to time, my mind wanders off.  Maybe even mentally rides off into the sunset and imagines what it’d be like to saddle up a steed setting out over New Mexico’s South-Western desert lands.

The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. "Vámonos, amigos,” he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight.”- Eli Cash, Old Custer (The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001).  There’d be no friscalating into the dusklight for me this evening, friends, because those dusty (and smog filled) winds were blowing this-a-way, back into town.  Riding high on them?  None other than Lauren and Marissa of Tan Cologne.

It’s my first time in the Trotwood; a seasoned gig space and, take it from me, it's a slide guitar's wet dream (don’t ask me how I know).  I make my way upstairs towards the swirling paisley of an oil disc projector. Its splashed patterns across the ceiling reminds me of that time I took mushrooms, far out.  Perched on my high stool by a bend of macaroni bar on the second storey of this rickety ole joint, tunes are slung out at us instead of drinks from behind it.  A curly haired DJ played jangly ukulele and twangy ditties, half white rabbit and half aloha, from a freshly operated knee connected to some cyborg apparatus.  She cross-faded one into the next and, as she did, her shirt sleeve rose just enough to expose a Beavis and Butthead tattoo.  As her last song started to fade out, it reminded me of summer going out along with it.  It just so happened to be the crispest day in recent memory.  Tan Cologne took the stage, and when they did, they blew in like a zephyr.

‘Cerro’ kicks off the set from their debut album Cave Vaults On The Moon In New Mexico.  An otherwordly slow-burner, gently keeping pace with the steady tap of a tambourine.  It brings you off world by witch-craft rather than a rocket.  Nodding, swaying, and chins akimbo, a hushed and captivated audience were led free of those pesky earthly constraints, like gravity.  ‘Topaz Wave’, a new one from the soon to be released album was dangled before us.  Its gentle guitars were strummed like twinkling stars.  It’s a weightless and airy collection of notes.

Gently drifting back towards Earth, one foot still in outer space and the other planted firmly in the desert, ‘Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico’ marks the halfway point of the set.  It’s rather difficult to describe such an intimate gig with so many layers, textures, colours and shapes.  This must be how people with synesthesia feel talking to us norms.  Lauren and Marissa’s maracas play on cautiously like a rattler’s tail, fixing us to their arid New Mexico soundscape.

These desert poets hold our attention onstage where the walls join to make a corner.  The half mariachi, half siren band-mates knitt together rockabilly and country guitar in ‘Alien’ with a sound that reminds me of Holy Motors.  Collectively, the pair fill the cosy room with Oooooooooooo Aaaaaaaaaa.  Their velvety tones wrap around the audience like smoke and, once it cuts out, I realise I’ve been eavesdropping on the conversation at the table in front of me. ‘Really lovely, isn't it?'.  It is. I ’m uncertain any longer if I’m catching a dusty lounge act fresh from the sands of outer space or an ASMR podcast because I lost myself by the end of the set somewhere between a ‘Shell Grotto’ and the ‘Floating Gardens’.  Both new hits that swirl around their audience in silky whispered vocals, goose-pimple inspiring.

After their set, they each negotiate their way through a hungry audience waiting to feed off them with praise.  They’ll lift tiny moments to bring back home to their friends, where they’ll talk about when they met the band and got the CD to prove it.  I desperately practice a restraint I never knew myself capable of, for I too wanted to sit down and have a chat with the travelers.  An interview where I remained subjective instead of a gushing fan-boy but let’s face it, at this point, that was probably out of the question.  So, I left.  My last exit towards a destination unseen was London’s monolithic skyline.  This time the obstruction midway down the stairs was the band themselves, my own personal horizon.  I hear Marissa gleefully and with a chortle say, ‘yeah, where are our bikinis?’.  Of course, I have no idea what she’s talking about and really want to interject myself into this conversation’s completely based on its absurdity.  Instead, I think, of course you don’t realise the temperature’s no longer swimsuit friendly because you two have just lit this place ablaze.  See you next time, space cowgirls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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