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On a night when flowers didn’t suit my shoes…

I do not take notes. NEVER TAKE NOTES! I do not dance. NEVER DANCE! I no longer accept I have no community. NO COMMUNITY! My community exists in the cracks and the crannies, the dirty shadows, the folk too shy to go down the gym or engage in meaningful conversation. NO PUBS! I look around me and all I see are a hundred blokes who look nearly, but not quite, exactly like David Lance Callahan (Stewart Lee, if you will). ROB PURSEY! The music I listen to at home is often loud and joyful, untroubled. FULL OF TROUBLE! The music I listen to when I’m out (SO RARE!) is often the opposite. TROUBLED! DOUR! SULLEN!

Several times tonight, I am not at this show, engaged in a running row with my errant 16 (nearly 17)-year-old son. I RECALL BEING 16. FUCK I HATED MY TEENAGE YEARS AND EVERYONE AROUND ME. THE FIRST BAND I EVER SAW WAS SUBWAY SECT WHEN I WAS 17 – sullen, tuneful, smart, direct, laconic, wry (support to Buzzcocks at the Chelmsford Odeon) – CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW THAT SET ME UP FOR LIFE? The first album I bought was Live At The Witch Trials – IT SOUNDED SO ACCOMPLISHED, SO CHOCK FULL OF IDEAS and attitude I FIGURED IT MUST HAVE TAKEN SIX MONTHS TO RECORD. Fuck. Can you imagine how that set me up for life?

Last night, GINA BIRCH was like Live At The Witch Trials, as unsettling, unpredictable, direct and thought-provoking (my fucking keyboard keeps making me restart my thoughts in the middle of the previous sentence) and enjoyable. SOMEONE ON MY SIDE, I think to myself wrongly… cos this is nothing to do with me, much as I’d like someone to notice Mr Cellophane Me. ANYONE!!

Tonight, HOUSE OF ALL are like Subway Sect (in my mind) in ’78: no, not nostalgic you fucking prick, I am just looking for a comparison point. But: laconic, droll, direct, tuneful, high on the repetition and three drums front and the driving building feed of atmosphere. Me and my ‘mates’ I AM NOT BEING LITERAL HERE have long, near seriously, discussed how in many respects House Of All are prime Fall only even better because you can rely upon the singer (MARTIN BRAMAH) not to start fights with the audience… although, for many I’m guessing, that was part of the attraction of The Fall, particularly in the later years. Me? I always went for the music, never knew a single lyric – just liked the metronomic pulse beat and inflexion of the vowels. And the ad-libs. House Of All contain many, if not all, of THE prime Fall musicians if The Fall could ever be argued to have a prime.

These same ‘mates’ – OK THEY DON’T REALLY EXIST, SATISFIED? – are astonished at the way House Of All have released at least three FOUR? albums in the past couple of years, and the high quality of songs thereof. Rows and all looming in my head, I sadly depart 40 minutes in to go seek the prodigal. In Hove, actually.

Not Subway Sect at all, then.

Or maybe it’s EUROPEAN SUN who are more like Subway Sect (in my mind) in ’78 (or, at the least, Blue Orchids) – cos with their fearsomely laconic bent, and concern for the humdrum and universal injustices, and dry-as-something-very-dry-indeed-perhaps-a-tea-towel-that’s-been-hung-up-in-the-airing-cupboard-for-three-weeks humour and minimal instrumentation, and songs about wanting to be a pirate (sorry, couldn’t resist!), they remind me a little of that band I saw supporting House Of All, same venue, couple of years ago, Oldfield Youth Club, who evolved out of The Bitter Springs SIMON RIVERS, who served as Vic Godard’s backing band that time I saw him play in Wales in the 2000s, Vic being the singer and mainstay of Subway Sect… so it all lashes up, right?

Unfortunately, they are so dry and my ongoing row with my errant son so recent, I only last four songs before going back onto the landing to exchange laconic bantz with House Of All’s merch dude… the flowers didn’t suit my shoes. JOHN ROBB is mentioned a lot by what seems to now be a sprawling potential pub quiz team (assuming we don’t mind losing). As is NANA MOUSKOURI, my new charity store queen. Rumoured to have released over 800 albums, you know.

European Sun seem like a grower to me.

DISCLAIMER: This ‘review’ was written first take, no AI.

THIS REVIEW IS DEDICATED TO SCOTT AND BRIGITTE, the last time I actively sought out friends.

Call it heartland Everett True territory. Call it a cleansing ritual. I spend the next morning mainlining Northern Soul – five CDs, immaculate grooves, total devotion – trying to process what happened the previous night. Because something happened, for sure. Something magical.

You can never go home anymore.

And yet here I am, stood somewhere between the bar and the ghosts of my former self, shaking hands with people I once swore I’d never see again, feeling that old, uncontrollable urge kick back into life. I was racked with nerves on my way to the concert: fear of the unknown. My past. Why was I so worried?

A review in four parts.

1. Gina Birch and the Unreasonables

Everything shifts.

Fragility, inner strength: not as binaries, but as a tangle, a braid, a lived contradiction. Gina doesn’t so much perform songs as allow them to tumble out half- (fully) formed, trembling, daring you to meet them halfway. You can never go home anymore because Gina refuses the very premise. She stands rooted in the present tense and demands that you do the same.

‘The Feminist Song’ towers over everything. The line “When you ask me if I’m a feminist/Why the hell would I not be” isn’t rhetoric. It’s life lived and processed and handed back without apology. A revolution happening right now in front of our eyes. Everything I always believed music should be.

“I bet you’ve never seen three women playing bass before,” she laughs.

Colour-coordinated, luminous, slightly surreal: a fairytale in a supermarket where the fluorescent lights hum in sympathy. Songs like ‘I Play My Bass Loud’ and ‘Lola’ don’t just sit there – they ripple, they hesitate, they bloom. Every note fought over and wrestled into being. Pure genius.

•  The ‘Au Pairs’

The difference is subtle. The difference is everything.

The difference between Gina Birch and the ‘Au Pairs’ is profound. (Inverted commas because really, it’s just main woman Lesley Woods and three other musicians, very accomplished and cool musicians for sure, fucking great on stage and all that, but not the Au Pairs.) Gina is living painfully, beautifully in the present; Lesley – magnificent, undeniable – is reaching back, reassembling the past, holding it up to the light like a relic you’re not sure you’re allowed to touch. There is no comparison. I spend most of the ‘Au Pairs’ set catching up with my former community because that’s what this music does, or did, or still does if you let it. Helps you find your community again. Even so, the music is wonderful. Songs like ‘It’s Obvious’, ‘Come Again’, ‘Armagh’… they don’t land, they insist. Songs that dragged me away from the patriarchy over 40 years ago by confronting contradictions and injustice and gender imbalance head-on. Songs that made me reconsider sexual dynamics long before I even had sex.

No subtlety. No soft focus. Confrontation as choreography. Rhythm as argument.

Lesley Woods stands there, voice still sharp enough to slice through four decades of accumulated nonsense, while the guitars snap and recoil, angular as ever, and the rhythm section locks in with militant grace. They sound incredible. Tight, angular, precise. A fairytale in a supermarket, but one where the fluorescent lights flicker just enough to remind you it’s all reconstruction. Memory with muscle. Memory with teeth.

• Charley Stone said it best (the following is lifted with permission from her Facebook page:

About 2 mins into Gina Birch’s set, when she was on the stage alone and singing about rage, I remembered again that whenever I see her or The Raincoats, emotions happen, and that I’m often not sure what emotions they are, just that they’re very visceral and present. Will I start crying this time, I wondered. Or will I just burst out smiling. Viewers, I did both, intermittently, cycling between the two according to the song in this perfectly put together set. The harmonies, the instrument swapping, and mostly just this indescribable “other” that Gina brings to the stage, and which I think I’ve rarely experienced to such a degree in fact. I cried three times! And “burst out smiling” loads more. It was intense, and joyful, and cathartic, and just really good #art, the kind that takes hold of you and makes you feel stuff, and sparks little connections in your brain, gives you a different way in to feelings and thoughts that were probably there already but maybe could do with a shake, y’know?

“I’m a city girl/I’m a warrior/the city made me this way/when you ask me if I’m a feminist/why the hell would I not be” and “sunshine bursts right through me”.

And then they finished with Lola. I was not expecting that.

“Gina we love you!” I wanted to shout out at one point, but did not want to draw attention to myself.

I think this was one of my favourite ever gigs.

• A conclusion (of sorts)

That indescribable other. That thing you can’t historicise, can’t package.

The ‘Au Pairs’ remind you why you once needed this music.

Gina Birch reminds you why you still do.

I never go out to gigs anymore. I never take notes at gigs anymore. I never dance at gigs anymore. When it’s going well, I close my eyes and drift upstream, immerse myself in the music, my safe place, hairs on my arm lit up like the lights on Sunderland bridge, gently swaying from side to side, thinking back to the past, through the past, times when I would clamber on stage uninvited and fall drunkenly backwards into the main band’s drum kit, times when I would join musicians on stage in Berlin to pay tribute to Nikki Sudden while they played cascading tumbling arpeggios on the piano. Arguments on honeymoons. I never take notes at gigs anymore, my words are bereft if meaning, as I sway (lurch in my head) from foot to foot, soaking up the tangibly exciting skronk jazz vibes of Lello, thinking back to when that sax on ‘4 Hours’ sounded more persuasive than sex easy, dogs barking, in tune with the rhythm and the magic and the No Wave gentility, blasting out dirty rhythm, collecting useless information, awkward and nervy and alive, then once more I have found my safe space to retreat to, a world separate from any of your worlds. Cinematic, sure. If that’s the buzzword of your fancy.

Lello are from London. They are killerdiller great. For fans of James White and The Box. Core Cafe Oto (a place I have never seen). You can find them here.

And I do this all over again for Memorials.

Except… no, not quite. Memorials don’t let you disappear so easily. In the spaces between the silences, Memorials tug at your sleeve, insist you feel it, properly feel it, like you used to when music still mattered more than whatever it is you pretend matters now. Like you still feel it, every now and then. Verity Susman stands there, half in shadow, half in some private frequency only she can decode, voice drifting somewhere between lullaby and incantation. Not singing to you, not even singing at you. Just singing. Matthew Simms, meanwhile, is less guitarist, less percussionist than navigator: steering this ramshackle vessel through kosmische eddies, dub undercurrents and sudden squalls of noise that feel not performed. Conjured.

It starts gently enough. Of course it does. A pulse, a flicker, something almost recognisable as a song. You think you’ve got it pegged: ah yes, a bit of Broadcast here, a touch of Velvets drift there, maybe even a ghost of Nico wandering in late and unannounced. But then it slips. Everything slips. Time signatures dissolve, melodies unravel and reform like smoke, and suddenly you’re no longer drifting upstream – you’re suspended, weightless, somewhere between the shed at the bottom of the garden and the outer reaches of a universe you don’t remember agreeing to visit.

And still I don’t take notes.

How do you write down a moment when a motorik groove locks in (briefly, gloriously) only to be dismantled by a burst of analogue chaos that sounds like someone kicking over a rack of oscillators? How do you quantify the way Susman’s voice can feel both ancient and immediate, like it’s been echoing around your skull for years waiting for this exact night to reveal itself? There’s a song – if it is a song – from Memorial Waterslides, I think, though it might be something new, something from that forthcoming record they’re already half-living in. It blooms slowly, insistently. Less a composition, more an environment. You don’t clap so much as emerge from it when it ends.

This is the thing about Memorials: they deal in thresholds. Between pop and experiment, between structure and collapse, between the comfort of melody and the thrill of losing it completely. One moment you’re nodding along, thinking yes, this is lovely, this is nice, and the next you’re caught in a swirl of tape-loop ghosts and free-jazz exhalations that remind you that “nice” was never the point.

At some stage, they hit something approaching a groove that feels almost… funky? No, that’s not right. Too earthbound. Funk viewed through a cracked mirror, refracted via Canterbury and Cologne, dub basslines lurking like submerged memories. Simms leans into it, coaxes it, then just as you settle, just as your body remembers that yes, you could dance if you wanted to – he pulls it apart again. Leaves you swaying, unresolved.

And Susman threads it all together. Utterly central. A quiet gravitational force.

I never dance at gigs anymore.

But there’s a moment, just one, where I almost do. Not visibly, not in any way you’d clock from across the room. Just a shift, the briefest of stumbles. The kind of movement you’d deny if challenged. And that’s enough.

Because by the end, I’m back where I started: eyes closed, drifting.

I still don’t take notes.

But if I did, they’d probably just read: this mattered.

Fucking worth every penny. Oh wait, I didn’t pay.

Fuck it. I’m not apologising at this late stage. My love is bigger than your love. mclusky rock harder than the average band. SING IT! My love is bigger than your love. mclusky rock harder than the average band. SING IT! The finest shows are the ones where you step into oblivion for eons at a time, only to be rudely yanked back into the present by a singer making wan jokes about Kings Of Leon while frothing caustic soda in the vague direction of Johnny Depp and all who have drifted listlessly alongside her. The greatest shows are the ones you cannot recall in any sensible detail, only the stop-start surges and the bassist pummelling his instrument so violently – thrashing, pitching, detonating – you fear for the ceiling joists. The greatest shows possess LOUD, unforgettable choruses and a vocalist who unleashes righteous maelstrom after righteous maelstrom, refusing to relent, refusing to inhale, until he is certain the skirmish is over and then, only then, unleashes an exorcism of invective and exquisitely barbed humour. The best gigs have the drummer caged for his own safety. SING IT!

There are few bands who could follow the sheer welter and torrent and piss-stream of emotion that is mclusky’s opening number, ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues,’ with another dozen or so songs that match it blow for blow. (I type “match,” but it’s clear the band pour every reserve of pent-up frustration into this set.) There are few bands who stand shoulder to shoulder with The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, or that last great gush of Chicago ’93 squalor, and somehow appear to be more than the equal. There are few bands who can conjure the sweet sneer of early Seething Wells, the verve of Courtney Barnett, the bone-dragging gravity of Swans; few bands who can evoke The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not on Fire’s scorched-earth energy and still rock harder than most all combined. I am guessing. Didn’t you read my opening sentences? All I truly remember is a welter of energy and a torrent of steam and a piss-flap of noise: harmonies wrought sacred through shouting, shouting abruptly curtailed by laughter, laughter feeding back into the happiest crowd I’ve witnessed for at least a couple of days.

There are few bands brazen enough to title their songs ‘Kafka-Esque Novelist Franz Kafka’, ‘Way Of The Exploding Dickhead’, ‘Unpopular Parts Of A Pig’ and the epoch-crushing ‘Alan Is A Cowboy Killer’, charge straight through the promise and out the other side. There are few bands who can return after years of absence 1,000 times more energised than when they first appeared. I am still guessing here. Don’t you read my words? I cannot recall a single coherent second of mclusky’s set – only the force, the velocity, the electricity, the refrain hammering through my skull: MY BAND ROCKS HARDER THAN YOUR BAND! Sing it.

I want to mention the first band on, too: M. Woodroe. If I have any secret at all when it comes to music, it is this: turn up early enough to see the fucking support. Case in point: the uncannily monikered M. Woodroe (your guess is as good as mine). On at 10 minutes past doors, and worth every second of the wait. Stage left seemed to channel a patchwork of female-fronted rock and unrock – PJ Harvey, Scout Niblett, even a brush of early Sonic Youth. Stage right leaned more traditionally male, but in the best possible way: post-Slint, post-My Bloody Valentine, post-everything I’ve never encountered. Songs slithered and shook themselves into form, molten and restless, sometimes scarily soft, sometimes scarily not. Twice, my party of two exchanged a conspiratorial “New Eves?” – and we were properly thrilled at the thought, because New Eves and their ilk deserve far more allies than they have.

Such a great evening.

P.S. I also dug Post Common‘s post-hardcore stylings.

The best gigs are the ones where you don’t even realise you’re there.

The best gigs are the ones that reinforce a sense of community, that feel like a homecoming, that reassure and reassert without compromise, that can cut through the flak and the grey of everyday existence and give you a reason to dance, to punch the air, to breathe easy once more. During the encores, just around the time my punk heroes are starting ‘All Times Through Paradise’, a fellow sporting a world-weary moustache taps my shoulder. Jim White. I remark to him the last time we met was watching that emotional, blistering performance of The Saints reunited (Ed Kuepper and Chris Bailey) at ATP on Mount Buller 2009. He acquiesces. Maybe, who cares.

I apologise for missing out the incendiary horn section from my photo. It takes me a few numbers to understand I am watching Mark Arm swinging on stage with my OG punk heroes, not Chris Bailey – so I don’t necessarily enjoy ‘Swing For The Crime’ or ‘No Time’ as much as I might. Then I realise Mark is just being himself (channelling the other original punk band The Stooges) and everything clicks. This current Saints line-up – Kuepper on guitar a firebomb wrapped in geniality, Ivor Hay pounding the drums with all the elegant brutality he perfected back in ’73, the holy horn triumvirate blasting righteous sunshine into the cracks – is a glorious, feral extension of the original Saints ethos: noise first, subtlety hidden under the floorboards, total commitment always. Ed Kuepper is as incendiary as ever (as Uncut rightly puts it, “Kuepper is a motherfucker of a guitar-player, his sound just as molten and unrelenting as back in the day”) an exorcism of everything that is wrong about most guitar players made real by his thrashing energy and casual way around a wall-destroying riff, Ivor giving drums the pummelling they always deserve, feedback blasting out my ears it’s so high/I love all the monitor men why are they alive, the trio of holy horn players blasting up a righteous storm in the corner and… oh holy fuck. Is that the greatest single ever recorded starting up? It sure as fuck is.

Third song in, Kuepper and the gang almost casually throw away the greatest single ever recorded, ‘This Perfect Day’, the one I would whack on at full volume on the Dansette shared by Jamie and me in our North London pad whenever I felt down, depressed, energised and wanting to fuck with the world. But wait. Too many conflicting emotions, too many conflicting memories. The best gigs are the ones where you wake as if from a trance and realise somehow 40 minutes have passed by, and your neck is sore from thrashing your head around, and… there are some ‘proper’ punks over there, look like they stepped straight off the Carnaby Street production line circa ’77 and man they’re excited to hear the anti-fascist ‘Brisbane (Security City)’, but so am I. So am I!! What with Brisbane being my adopted hometown (The Saints, The Go-Betweens, Laughing Clowns, Scrabble…) and what is this? Ed Kuepper on stage in front of us: someone shouts “Ed I love you, you’re my hero” and Ed laughs and nods his thanks, and I wonder if perhaps it’s me or Jamie who actually shouted that.

The best gigs, oblivion punctuated by such roaring moments of recognition it’s all you can manage to stop your head from exploding: ‘No, Your Product’, ‘Messin’ With The Kid’, and straight after that one, two other serious contenders for greatest single ever recorded at the main set’s end ‘(I’m) Stranded’ and… oh my fucking God… ‘Know Your Product’ with those indelible horn breaks and Mark Arm screaming like a tiger possessed and the guitars roaring heat like a score of motherfuckers on heat, and I turn and realise I have been dance/swaying next to my old dancing buddy Geoff for the past hour, Geoff who I have seen once before in the last 20 years, Geoff who was there when we stormed out of The Venue (Victoria) through a crowd of braying Birthday Party fans after witnessing Laughing Clowns for the first time, dancing our way through the electrical storm and through any other number of incendiary knee-destroying gigs. We could not stop dancing. Didn’t bother us if others were, if others weren’t. From the first note, we knew. From the very first note.

And so it remains tonight. The Saints, the band that ignited a revolution in my heart and a band that should be packing out fucking stadiums by this point, live in front of us… ‘Demolition Girl’ as alive and furious as you’d expect, Mick Harvey somewhere stage left, Terry Edwards somewhere stage right, an original fucking Sunnyboy on bass (do your research, do your research!)… ‘Private Affair’, ‘(I’m) Misunderstood’, can I mention ‘Know Your Product’ again please…

I will forgive you pretty much anything, but I will never forgive you for not loving The Saints.

Oh yeah, this band played too. Chimers, an ex-Irish pat and stand-up drummer from Wollongong, and man they were pretty fucking great as well. Damn straight they were: echoes of Shellac and Seam and all those impassioned one-chord noise merchants from the early 90s, blood on the fretboards and sullen, sweet moments of tenderness interposed between the noise, but… man, I hope they don’t mind if I remain focused on The Saints.

Shoot the professor. I am stranded. But for once, not on my own.

Above is a photo of La Mômo, from the Rose Hill on Friday.

The last few nights have been crammed. There is stuff happening off-camera that needn’t concern us here except to help contextualise this crammed feeling: not just crammed, super-crammed. Floating and flitting from one place to another, with only a few minutes notice. Folk contact me with suggestions that I attend concerts that I knew nothing about a few days before. Thursday night, for example.

SPOILER WARNING

Lauren: “Thursday night was Traitors night. The finale. Personally, I’d been rooting for the Traitors the entire series, especially Cat. When Cat got voted out, I let out a scream of disappointment. But when Alan won, I let out a cackle of delight because I do not know how he managed that, frankly. When Nick started swearing that was very funny, especially with the pre-show warning of strong language. He knew Joe would be waiting outside to kill him.”

Here’s the deal. I knew the Celebrity Traitors finale was taking place. I was psyched. It is rare that I share experience with the general population, and I thoroughly enjoy it when it happens. I wish I liked sports more, for that very reason. I love that feeling of being part of a crowd, that I do not exist just alone. But anyway. My friend Helen McCookerybook mentioned she was playing at the Albert on Thursday: both me and Alice like Helen. She is so sweet. So fierce. So inspiring. Always smiling and upbeat but simultaneously not someone you would want to upset in a million years. Fierce and uplifting. Writes songs from experience and songs to experience. Unsettling but only to those who deserve to be unsettled. So she’s playing at the Albert and as ever, she offers to put me on the list even though she’s first on.

Of course we go. Of course I have no photographic evidence because I am too caught in the moment, the stagecraft, the lilt and stagger of her songs of betrayal and outsiders, the way she asks the entire crowd to sing the chorus to ‘The Sea’ and no one can resist her. Moments like this are so vital to me, my sense of being, my sense of Who I Am. We stay for precisely the length of her set and leave. No disrespect to the other acts (who I am sure are tremendous and very affecting) but I needed to get back, to join the communal experience.

Here is a photo of Helen I took on another occasion I saw her.

OK. Lauren. Back here, please. What were you doing Friday afternoon?

“I was lying in my bed, scrolling YouTube Shorts when all of a sudden, I get a call from my dad. He says, ‘Go on Lauren, get your make-up on, get an outfit on, we’re going out tonight’. Bit random, but ok…”

Oh. Wait. You’re going a little too far ahead for me. I said these past few days have been crammed. A couple of days earlier, I receive a message from a friend on Facebook. I am on the list to see Sydney band Party Dozen at Mutations, Friday afternoon. Party… what? I check them out. A man who drums so heavy he could be in Sunn 0))). A woman who blows (and sings) down her saxophone so sharp and shredding she could be James Chance. Backing tapes and tracks so febrile and mesmeric, it could be my old Brisbane homeys Blank Realm. Hypnotic energy. Intense fun. At one point, they cover a Suicide song (‘Ghost Rider’) and it’s like the last 50 years of shit never happened. Kirsty Tickle stomps and leaps around the stage and manipulates her sax like a woman possessed. Jonathan Boulet pounds his drums with such intensity and speed and abandon, like a demon possessed. Maybe it is the other way around, I don’t know?

I do know that this is some of the finest shit-kicking live music I have witnessed since last time I crossed paths with Tropical Fuckstorm. Maybe even more so.

No, no. It’s not a fucking competition.

I would have stayed longer Friday, honest to God, but by that point circumstances were way beyond my control. I most certainly wanted to see ChopChop (their music has been described as “veering from super-bumping agit-funk to angular jazz-punk and beyond”), but… circs defeated me. I had just time to message Lauren, drive to Haywards Heath and back, feed Nina, pick her up, get ripped off by a local car park, soaked in the pouring rain, and for the two of us to get there just before La Mômo went on stage… Take it Lauren.

“It was quite a small gig. The crowd were definitely into it, there was some dancing going on, both in the audience and on the stage. There was a surprising mix of ages. The music was energetic punk-pop, and the duo had a brilliant stage presence. I particularly liked the song which had nonsense lyrics, cool chords and a pounding beat. Sadie was standing up, pounding the big bass drum and then other times she’d start playing counter-melodies on her guitar to Chris’ psychedelic wailing. [Lauren is talking about Chris’ guitar playing here, I think. Not his singing.] Both of them were singing, Chris doing backing vocals and pretending to be a trumpet, helping amplify the music to such an extent that it would have been impossible for anyone there hoping for a quiet drink to ignore them. There was one song that went ‘I don’t want to take you to the movies/I just want to take you to the stars’ and Sadie’s vocals were so repetitive and compelling it was impossible for the audience not to join in. Her voice reminded me a little of one of the singers from Los Campesinos!, the way it bubbled under the radar of twee but is being used for ROCK!”

We were in there, we were out of there. 45 minutes flat.

Words: Lauren Thackray, 14
Edits: Jerry Thackray, 64

Meandering along Camden High Street, I chance across a torrent of pastel and bunny ears more suited to a community Easter Egg Hunt than a rock concert. (What, lying in a heap in the street outside Camden Tube Station? Or are you referring to that surprisingly lengthy queue of Beach Bunny fans outside the Electric Ballroom, patiently waiting and chatting. at least an hour before doors? – Ed.) I say ‘rock’, but does Beach Bunny count as rock? With their harsh, abrasive lyrics and style, I would say so. (Why wouldn’t Beach Bunny count as rock? They have a guitarist whose Instagram handle references Pavement, singer Lili who reminds me of a more energetic Gwen Stefani minus the confusing signals, and guitars which ROCK! All rock signifiers in my book! – Ed.) Boys in hoodies, girls in glitter, fashion choices which range from the passionate to the obsolete.

Upon finding my dad, I find myself starstruck. (What? At me? Thank you but that must make mealtimes quite awkward for you! – Ed.) Anthony, the lead guitarist for Beach Bunny, is standing right in front of me. (Whoa! Why? Just luck and happenstance? – Ed.) Of course, being the fangirl that I am, I ask him to sign my school tie and a piece of paper for my best friend. Very little goes through my head apart from “What am I doing here” as we all chat about music over burgers upstairs in a handily-placed outlet.

From where we are sitting, all I see for nearly an hour is a constant stream of people flood into the venue; I’m concerned about being stuck at the back of the crowd. Unbeknownst to me, the passes Anthony has procured for us (three legendary AAA passes, Access All Areas – Ed) allow everywhere in the sold-out venue to be easily accessible (possibly even the stage during the band’s set, although we didn’t actually try this theory out – Ed). Walking into the venue, it hits me. I am here. Beach Bunny live! In London! (Yeah, you’ve only been asking me to get you tickets for the last four months – Ed.) The excited chatter of like-minded fans draws me back to my unbelievable reality while I meet the drummer and scan the merch booth (whose seller is also delightfully friendly – Ed).

I stroll up to the blissfully isolated balcony as Blondie plays in the background. As I settle into my not-so-hard-earned view of the stage, I wonder if I’ve prepared my voice enough for all the screaming I’m about to do. Lead singer Lili Trifilio takes centre-stage, and I find myself completely removed from the moment. (Lost in the moment, surely? – ancient Sister Sledge-loving Ed.) The surf-rock ‘Cloud 9’ begins, and all the fans below me lose it. I would be lying if I said I didn’t do the same towards the end of the set (‘Good Girls Don’t Get Used’, ‘Clueless’), but I would like to believe I kept my composure for the first few songs. (You sure about that? – Ed.) Or at least my turning point wasn’t until ‘Year Of The Optimist’, their newest single. (I too thoroughly enjoyed the first five or six numbers, in particular Lili’s balletic energy, and Anthony’s guitar pyrotechnics and odd explosion of sound: after the opening salvo, I found myself thinking of Ramones – how everyone who loves them loves them and everyone who doesn’t complains about how the songs sound the same. Ramones samey! No way. This is punk! This is pop! This is ace live music for all 1,500 of us here – Ed.) (That’s enough Ed – Ed.)

I will now list some personal highlights of the show.

1. During self-described punk-pop anthem ‘Chasm’, the song was stopped halfway due to a ruckus in the crowd. Upon Lili’s enquiry, several people shouted up to the stage that this obnoxious man was pushing. Ironically, he put his hands up as he was indeed caught red-handed. Upon security escorting him out of the venue, all was well and corrected. What I find so hilarious about this encounter is that I caught it all on video, able to watch his guilty face again and again. Also, the crowd booing the man on his way out was humiliating for him yet incredibly funny for us.
2. Lili’s constant yet futile attempts to coerce the crowd into moshing. Throughout the show, Lili begged the crowd to break loose but it consistently only ended in energetic jumping. My personal theory is that most of the crowd was too shy to do so, or didn’t know how to. However, before the third encore ‘Painkiller’, she successfully managed to create a very, very mini wall of death. From where I was, it looked like they were practically bouncing off each other, and therefore a lot of missed-out fun.
3. The age of nearly everyone attending the show. When my maths teacher labelled Beach Bunny as “young people music”, I was very much offended. He is in his early thirties. After this concert, I think I owe him an apology. I estimate that nearly everyone in the venue who wasn’t a chaperone was under 25.

Overall, Beach Bunny are a fantastic, energetic, bubbly band in concert who do not disappoint. Lili’s kicks and chatter are exciting, Anthony’s riffs and edgy rockstar moves are enchanting, and the way the band play together is enlightening. (I particularly enjoyed the way the crowd screamed whenever Anthony moved closer to them or held his guitar in the air like he’d just found a trophy, and the way he waved at the three of us in the balcony at the start of ‘Mr Predictable’ – Ed.) Personally, I’m betting on Beach Bunny taking over the world before the next TikTok trend does. (That’s a six-seven from me – Ed.) Dad! That is so cringe!

So. All of us are way impressed by Robert’s Swedish band, the way they move and bounce, the array of effects pedals, their sensitivity and geniality. Their vocal harmonies and guitar patterns are a delight, like synchronised swimming in musical form (or so my companion suggests later). I say all of us. I have no way of knowing that. I am simply reflecting the reports I have read since.

The setting is stunning, too. Those of us who live in London may well already know this and may have become a little blasé about it accordingly. For those of us here for the first time, it is way special, magnificence. Check the ceilings, the pews, the ornate balconies, the altar. Like living out the sleeve to Spring Hill Fair. A hint of dry ice before the set is quickly put paid to by Robert’s dry command. Thank goodness for that! Such a venue! Worthy of a paragraph all to itself.

And a photo.

So. The songs. That’s what it comes down to, surely? Lashings of goodness. Really. From the opening, sardonic ‘Strawberries’ (which is prime Velvet Underground with a soupcon or two of humour added) to the closing triumphant ‘People Say’, class. Pure class. I once saw Robert give a masterclass to QUT students in Brisbane, where he talked about the necessity of sticking to your craft, writing song day after day after day. Or was that Nick Cave (who Robert reminds of us in his moves, slinking with sinuous grace around the stage)? No matter. Robert didn’t need to say anything, really. Each of these songs in itself is a masterclass on how to write a song. I always thought ‘German Farmhouse’ was my favourite of his post-2000 songs – such as delightful sweep of unfettered desire and emotion and memory. Now, I’m not so sure. It could be the epic travelogue ‘Breakfast On The Train’ (from the new album Strawberries), which Robert prefaces tonight with an introduction almost as long as the song itself. I can almost taste the slightly singed eggs over-easy, feel the rush of coats through the hotel door.

Oh, and watching Robert himself. Such a delight. He jumps off stage pre-encore to hug what looks to be the oldest gentleman in the place, and then crawls back across the stage on all fours, acknowledging age and channelling Iggy Pop simultaneously. During ‘Surfing Magazines’ (and that is surely my favourite of all the post-breakup Go-Betweens songs) he steps back from the microphone to delicately allow both band and audience to layer harmonies. He introduces ‘I Love Myself (And I Always Have)’ with a comment to the effect that this is the most-requested of any of his songs. He doesn’t do a single cover version. Has he ever?

There is almost too much goodness to take in, exquisitely crafted songs and band interplay. He refers to how much he loves his Swedish band a lot, understandably. He is subtle in his communications, never overstated. There is a sweet shout-out to his accountant brother on the merch stall (where copies of the the wonderfully spiky Very Quick On The Eye can be had for a cool £100). Afterwards my companion remarks upon the fact Robert clearly didn’t enjoy some of his time in the original version of The Go-Betweens: she gleaned this from his comments about how happy he was in the early Nineties, post-break-up – as embodied in his introduction to ‘German Farmhouse’. I hadn’t picked up on that at all, but of course that would be one interpretation.

So many favourites overlooked, and so many favourites played – a playful ‘Draining The Pool For You’, ‘Was There Anything I Could Do?’, ‘Love Is A Sign’, ‘Dive For Your Memory’. And ‘Spring Rain’ of course. Robert cannot help but make me wistful for Brisbane and a family life that never truly existed every time I hear him play.

I wasn’t even aware some were favourites until he played them live.

“Hail the new puritans! Righteous maelstrom!” – The Fall, ‘New Puritan’, 1980 (as always heard by me)

After the show, it was agreed that the support band – the mighty, the tumultuous, the life-affirming Radio Anorak – are closer to the spirit of The Velvet Underground than the main band – the otherworldly, the mesmeric, the primal New Eves. It was suggested that Radio Anorak’s lanky, languid, confusingly direct singer channels (in places) Lou Reed, even if the sonic dissonance underneath – the guitars being shaken, rattled and treated with loving disrespect – is more reminiscent of towering Welsh insurgents Datblygu; the approach to the mundane and the surreal more reminiscent of obscure naive experimentalist Brisbane outfit The Deadnotes (back when they had a weirdo English hack on guest vocals) or perhaps Porridge Radio. The first song simply counted back from a high number. Other songs mentioned shopping expeditions and didn’t. The band were simply terrific, honey – there was a sense (as with Tropical Fuckstorm being preceded by Maria Iskariot last year), that boy oh boy our feral Brighton sweethearts New Eves must be confident indeed in their own powers to follow such an inspirational, frantic, energising opening act.

This is what Radio Anorak looked like (sort of):

Anyway, The Velvet Underground comparison for The New Eves feels like patriarchal journalism. A violin and a cello player in the band? Must sound like a male band! Must be the Velvets! Whoever was DJing called it far closer. I swear I heard The Ex, and straight after New Eves finished their set with a coruscating and insurgent version of the Velvets’ ‘White Light/White Heat’ (oh… OK!), out sounded The Raincoats’ still blisteringly appropriate version of ‘Lola’. “Lou Reed would have hated that,” remarks a fellow punter sagely about the New Eves’ encore. (What? Not linear enough?) “John Cale would have loved it though.” Back on the merch stall, the ladies from The New Eves are already present, selling freshly handmade badges (all donations going straight to Palestine relief), screen-printed T-shirts and the new album.

Did I mention the new album yet? It is my go-to listening on the train, alongside gospel compilations, Datblygu and recordings of myself. Transportive.

Yes, a medieval Ut. Very much their own selves, though.

This review is a ramble, a morning-after stream-of-consciousness, in deference to Radio Anorak. ‘White Light’ sees Radio Anorak pulled back on stage; earlier, the end-of-tour buddies pulled The New Eves onstage for their encore, where they whooped up and down and layered mighty three-part shouty harmonies, Violet dancing round in the shadows, chaos and beauty reigning supreme.

Kate plays bass in both bands… afterwards, we wonder at the amount of stamina required to be doing that for an entire tour. Wonderful, though.

There are new songs. There are old songs. There is ‘Rivers Run Red’. There is that final one where Ella picks up her flute for a while before the band takes on a trippy many-faceted journey through futures and pasts, their own senses of being. It strikes me on many occasions that one of the reasons for The New Eves’ “uniqueness” (terrible word), their strangeness, what separates them from the pack is Ella’s drumming: stood up, primal, forceful, never crossing her arms and when she sings she really does recall the wonder and challenge of Eve Libertine (Crass). Yet, you could point to the other three members and say precisely the same: Nina stage-front and Violet stage-right channelling shades of Richard Thompson, Anne Clark and Television when they pick up their electric guitars: and yet, it’s the harmonies and direct point/counterpoint that always kill me when I hear their songs, the depth, those stringed instruments dancing their own dance, the bass.

New single ‘Red Brick’ is ravishing live, way better than the recorded version (which of course might yet grow on me).

I don’t know. Man, two of my favourite bands playing the same night, the same show. Fucking phenomenal.

My old friend and bandmate Sandra summed it up on Facebook: “Wish I could thank him Jerry. Been singing along for 40 years. That deserves a thanks.”

Yes. That sure does. I’d been warned not to expect too much: I’d been warned to expect emotional overload: I’d been warned that Edwyn cannot hit all the high notes: I’d been warned that I wouldn’t be able to take it all in. I’d be warned this is the final tour. All I really wanted to do was to go along and pay tribute to the man who has helped shape my life through his music – who showed it was ok to be vulnerable, ok to be sensitive, ok to have pride in your own ways and not have the answers to everything, ok to be articulate and erudite and not be ashamed of being smart, ok to have a voice that could conjure up the feelings of a generation in a few heartfelt notes but still miss the high ones, ok to be Scots (of course!), ok to be funny and self-deprecating and aware of personal failings but turn them into positives. All I wanted to do was go along and thank the man I’ve been singing along to for 40 years. Anything else was a bonus.

An Orange Juice song or five? Oh, go on then. If you insist. The supremely smart, sardonic ‘Campaign For Real Rock’? Yes please. That beautiful, wonderful latter-day beauty ‘Low Expectations’? Why not? Some beautiful, beautiful Paisley Underground-style harmonies from main support band (The Hanging Stars)? Oh please, please, please. I can never miss Green On Red, Big Star, Teenage Fanclub enough (except of course, Hanging Stars were fresh, Hanging Stars were startling in the way they appeared before us, so fully-formed and realised). A recap of that half-empty hall in Luton where Edwyn played in the mid-Eighties – either with or without Orange Juice, memory falters – where his new song ‘What Presence!?’ tore my world apart and seamlessly made me weak at the knees? God yes. ‘Simply Thrilled Honey’? Why the fuck not? WHY THE FUCK NOT!

Ultimately though, I just wanted to go along and say thanks – for me, my friends and all my unknown friends and colleagues.

You say that there’s a thousand like you
Well, maybe that’s true
I fell for you and nobody else

Oddly, as we enter the church early in search of seats as close to the altar as possible, I hear a voice calling me over, using my real name. It’s Edwyn sitting with Grace, proudly anticipating their son’s band (the heartfelt, lilting Bayview), Grace cradling a steamer (for the throat), laughing as they recount the episode of when I visited their house for a 4-hour interview… only to discover later the tape hadn’t come out. Oddly, I’d been telling my companion the same story only minutes before. I insist that our photo includes Grace, as she is an absolute legend.

I don’t know. As I get older, I realise that everything I once assumed to be true has split asunder and taken new shapes, new forms. For decades, I would refuse to go and watch bands when they reformed, artists once they’d passed their first or second album. I felt it devalued the currency, the bond. (Pavement, Pere Ubu, Mudhoney… I am particularly thinking of you.) Ah jeez! Could I be more wrong? Tonight, my emotions are in freefall, turmoil: there is the scent of miracles in the air, a sprinkling of true magic. It could be the songs – and man, the songs alone justify any sort of reprisal – but I think it’s more than that. Shared experience. Stored memories. The sense of community, the sense of belonging rekindled and brought back to life, centred around this man who means so much to us, we’ve been singing his songs for so long. It’s so rare that I feel that sense of belonging, now I enter the twilight of my life. But…

Look.

How could I not feel that sense?

I could sing you near every damn song there verbatim (and I have no memory for lyrics). ‘Don’t Shilly Shally’ blindsides me for a moment: I had forgotten its wonder. ‘Consolation Prize’, ‘In A Nutshell’, ‘Falling And Laughing’…. FALLING AND FUCKING LAUGHING… oh my god, where is ‘Felicity’ where is ‘Felicity’??? Look, if you’re after a more coherent informative review, there is a really lovely one here. I am mostly speechless. Wait, did I just rush past massive sections of my life? Wait. What?

Photographs by Nainesh Shah (set list via Phil Hubbard).

The late bus is leaving
From the lonely station
So grab your silk stockings
And your
Dance invitation

I never got a chance to thank you properly, Edwyn. Thank you.