Bristol
4 October 2018
First up at The Thunderbolt were Dead Space Chamber Music, offering up a crafted dronescape of e-bowed pickups and cylindered frets from Tom Bush and a witchy, spiralling sonic topped off with choral gasps and murmuring abstractions from Ellen Southern. Even without their cellist (who couldn’t make it), this was still whorling and wondrous, routing the rich ritualistic vibe as those glints of restrained guitar picked at her sun-wheeled vocals.
The second track evilled an
Edith Piaf-like glow, with a Spanish-tinged guitar for the vocalist to slither a deep melancholic. A
vibe that had you totally captivated as her words theatrically spiralled, illuminated, then liminally spilled, (a performance that ensured a rush to the merch table from the hardest of hearts). The last track percussively pandered a wilder dynamic in a
tour de force of claspy thump to gnarly guitar, as Ellen volta(ed) a medieval operatic, later crouching down, a mirror held high above her, circling the venue’s ceiling as their set slowly drowned in a dirgey demise.
Continuing to delve into the darkness, the next act
New Haunts grab-bagged a more synthesised stance with a cold wave backing bolstered by electronic snare and
Zola Jesus-like vocals. A smouldering
Depeche Mode mood that was saturated in some sublime sulphurous soundscape, the odd industrialised injection upping the diaspora, something that behind closed eyes vividly vexed, muscled satisfactorily in your mind’s eye like tyre-splashed neon.
“I really can’t be bothered”, exclaimed Rose McDowall in broad Glaswegian, adding “I just wanna go to bed”, as the band limbered up behind her … “but you don’t wanta hear that — do you, children?” to a wagging finger, before launching straight in there. Rose was a real force of nature, her voice a booming thing, possessed, dispatching lungfuls to each and every song. Honestly, if this was “can’t be arsed”, give me more. As the songs wheeled around her in a tremolo(ed) glow of doused and driven psych rock, she submerged herself in, fed off. “I’m in a right MOOD tonight”, she warned.
Between tracks she kicked stuff off the stage, complaining the it was too full. “I wanna do something mental”, she stated, but instead she waved the mic stand round by the cord to shrieking feedback from the monitors. “Oh look, I’m fishing”, she noted sarcastically, whilst periodically throwing her lyric book around the place — and that’s just the half of it. Honestly, this was just fab – was she drunk? “No, I’m just kranky”, she snapped — and boy it made the night all that more special. I didn’t really know what to expect, but tonight was
an experience to be savoured as Rose chaotically threw herself wholeheartedly (sometimes literally) into the heat she was generating.
The sweetness of her Under the Yew songs were given a fiery dose of jalapeño, “Rudy Tears” transformed to power ballad, and the intensity of “Loki And Evil” was unbelievable — it gave me actual shivers — as Rose hunched up to a quivering Kaossilator’s Theremin hum, lost to the song’s repeated lines, her vocals a blur of raw expression that rifled round your head in whoooo(ing) mysticals. The hypnotic sway of her voice on “Let There Be Thorns” scooped the violin’s bow, that scar of guitar that seemed to hang on her syllabled sizzle, flourishing her lyrics in melodic spasm and brambling glint.
Disappointment and heartbreak over-flowed tonight. The mascaraed potency of “The Switchblade’s Deep Waters” and “Our Twisted Love’s” melancholic sparkle were testimony to Rose’s excellent way of throwing emotion in the air and seeing what lands; even the cover versions (that feel more like Rose McDowall originals) bled a delicious sombre hue. Her silky delivery pinned to a tumbledown backing of the
Velvet Underground cover “Sunday Morning”, limuosining its world-weariness straight in there. “April Skies”by The Jesus And Mary Chain was even better
and that storming rendition of ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper” — boy, this was great. Later she introduced “Since Yesterday” with a jaded “Oh, this has been fucking haunting me for far too long”, before blasting into its poppy dynamics with a rock-saturated vrooom, her voice maundering the melody with accented authority, delving deeper into the fabric.
I was hoping for “To Drown A Rose”, but got Spell‘s “Stone Is Very, Very Cold” instead, another of the evening’s high points, etching its introspectives up and down your spine — Priscilla Paris would have been so proud. An amazing amount of songs were sung — the lullaby-like “Epiphany” and “Angel’s” curious autumnal curls. Sadly, a lot I couldn’t actually pin down to a title, some of which Rose churlishly labelled as “Blue Peter”. The evening just flew by, soaked in modulary hues that Rose comically chirped “were so Doctor Who“. Suddenly she was fifteen minutes over the curfew, and I suspect the next track was all the louder with this knowledge, condensed into a comedic fifteen seconds before she ended the set properly on a stripped-back ditty (that I totally fail to recall the name of) – an absolute joy from start to apologetic finish.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
First up at The Thunderbolt were Dead Space Chamber Music, offering up a crafted dronescape of e-bowed pickups and cylindered frets from Tom Bush and a witchy, spiralling sonic topped off with choral gasps and murmuring abstractions from Ellen Southern. Even without their cellist (who couldn’t make it), this was still whorling and wondrous, routing the rich ritualistic vibe as those glints of restrained guitar picked at her sun-wheeled vocals.
