LIVE REVIEW: A.G Studio, Cleomace, ESWSG, Wallflower, Silicone Tongue. 10/07/24, Valhalla, Wellington.

LIVE REVIEW: A.G Studio, Cleomace, Elizabeth Sanctuary Welding School for Girls, Wallflower, Silicone Tongue. 10/07/24, Valhalla, Wellington.

  

there's something very special about getting to see a very long bill. For one night, a venue takes on an almost festival-like quality as people start drawing up lines and marking out their territory for the night and mini civilizations, with their own customs and alliances, are formed. for the next 4 hours you get to live in your own world with people who have everything and nothing in common with you, and you do it while getting pissed and watching great music. 

I was late showing up and they were still trying to finish sound checking the last few artists. I had to step over discarded guitar cases and snare drums to get a beer so I'd have something to do instead of talk to people who kept coming up to compliment my suit. People were filtering in slowly, slowed further by whoever was working the door composing sheet music for a song called "lesbian swords dance" in between sharpie-ing hands, which generated an intermittently healthy line at the door

A.G studio was first with a very gentle, Elliot Smith meets Jeff Buckley acoustic vibe. I'm not sure if it fits the noise punishment of the other bands but the music was good so it really doesn't matter. I'd love to see what they could do with a full rock band behind them (i'm thinking sort of a sebadoh thing here.) Here's a guy with the talent of everyone on indie folk mount rushmore and he's playing to mostly empty rooms. if this doesn't fix itself soon the world ain't right.

Cleomace was up next with a manic if generic take on the hyper pop sound. Their set suffered from difficulties with the PA but the crowd didn't seem to mind. i’d like to be able to see them again when they have the  sound dialled in properly. they were still sound checking when doors opened and I think they could have used another 5 minutes to iron things out. if you're one of those people who wear really big pants this would be an act to watch for.

 

Elizabeth Sanctuary Welding School for Girls is one of the worst live experiences i've ever heard and...nah, i can't do it. she's been begging me to write something nasty for months but I can't shame something I love. The songs, in a band context, stripped of the deliberate defence mechanism of lofi crud, actual rock extremely hard. Elizabeth Sanctuary’s Home for Imaginary Friends can be deliberately obtuse and obscure but live and stripped of pretence they function as an incredibly powerful even with occasional sloppy playing. Definitely one of the loudest bands of the night, Elizabeth sanctuary, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb demonstrated the power and effectiveness a great drummer can bring to an act like this. in this more pop friendly state, one wonders what would happen if Elizabeth Sanctuary V: The Phantom Pain made a heavily produced, "pop" (by Swamp Soul standards) studio album. You can hear buried elements of like, normal human music in there. it's like Weezer for people who didn't have friends in high school. 

Spirals provided the high point for a lot of the people in the crowd. i suspect the frantic mosh people worked themselves into left the audience feeling rather tired, as this is when people started to head home and the crowd thinned dramatically. i'm not blaming the band for this, though. They pumped out post punkish, emo influenced tracks with incredible swagger and almost militaristic tightness. as a very powerful and capable unit, they're definitely someone you're going to be seeing in the big font on posters in the next few months. 

 

second to last is Wallflower, an extremely powerful, angelic shoegaze act. Possibly the most musically assured band of the night, it’s nice to see a band that can remain main experimental but respects basic ideas of musical competency. you can see why singer/guitarist Mieke has been making waves as a solo artist because they’re someone clearly in firm control of both themselves and the audience, however, i’m not dismissing the efforts of the rest of the band, because the entire enterprise would fall apart without them providing an intense wall of sound. i consider them one of the legit competitors for the best shoegaze band in the city.

 

last but not least was Silicone Tongue, playing to a crowd of maybe 30 people. they’re even better than they were before, and they were pretty great then. as always, they’re complete masters of suspense and build ups, with some absolute punishing drops. i think they’ve developed some kind of telepathy because everything was done in such perfect sync. if you were there, and you left before they came on, which i won’t blame you for doing, you should know you missed something pretty magical.

 

that’s all she wrote for that night. If any of you care even a little bit about the future of good music anywhere on this earth, I implore you to come to these swamp soul gigs. they’re getting good turn outs but these are acts that should be selling out stadiums, people. these are the gigs that matter and we don’t get more of them unless you put some money in.

i’ll have some more content up next week. some more gig reviews, and some record reviews depending on how much my schedule allows for writing. my computer chair is falling apart and i need to take my recycling out. that is all. 

~O.