“We’re going punk tonight. It’s going to be
fucked”, bassist Ben Chisolm tells the crowd. It’s not looking good.
After half an hour spent wearily looking on as her bandmates prodded
despairingly at a broken laptop, Chelsea Wolfe is slamming guitar cases
onto the cobbled floor in front of the Green Door Store’s stage. That
Wolfe and her band take to the stage at all is a surprise.
Pushing six foot, dressed head to toe in black and
with dark rings of makeup all but shrouding her eyes in ghoulish shadow,
Wolfe ‘s presence mid stage is imposing, and for the first few songs
the crowd seem unsure of the Californian’s moodiness. A mumbled greeting
and apology are the only acknowledgement Wolfe makes as she and her
band dive into the doomy blues of Noorus.
Over the course of four songs, Wolfe is initially a
frustrating watch, her music immersive and enthralling, but the
sulkiness between songs distracting. The initial gloom of Pale on Pale
builds to a climax of powerfully interweaving layers that
thunder intently below Wolfe’s troubled, gothic soprano. Bounce House
Demons adds pace and menace to the darkness and seems to mark Wolfe and
co’s triumph over the earlier, technical demons.
The jewel is fifth song ‘Halfsleeper’, a strikingly
fragile solo turn from Wolfe that proves a showstopper in more ways
than one, Wolfe abruptly ending her set at the song’s close. For those
five or six minutes though, the air crackled. Wolfe’s floating vocals
and a fractured, jarring arpeggio invoked heartbreak, but soared with
fearlessness. The song ended with ghostly layers of Wolfe’s sampled
moans, drifting in the darkness. “We’re streaming in the wind”, she had
sung, “records playing memories”. The audience was mesmerised. But then
she stopped, casting the audience adrift, just as she had captured their
attention.
No such drama surrounded 2:54’s headlining set. Off the back of a well received stint in the US and collaboration
with Nine Inch Nails producer Alan Moulder, the buzz surrounding the
band is quickly growing. Despite this, the band – led by sisters Hannah
and Colette Thurlow - struggled with muddy sound that had a crew member
running between stage and sound desk early on.
2:54 have risen off the back of a reputation for
shimmering, atmospheric rock music that is as instant as it is carefully
layered. That might have been more apparent in a
different venue, but tonight subtlety and nuance echoed and collided,
getting lost amidst the redbrick arches of the Green Door Store - though
it would be unfair to solely blame a venue whose acoustics had earlier
served Wolfe’s reverb-heavy sound well.
For much of their set, 2:54 seemed to plod around
the same mid-tempo beat, leaving little structural or rhythmic drama to
come forward in place of the textural complexity that had already been
lost in translation. That said, it may have just been a slow start;
latter songs saw a more powerful rhythm section rumble below the
Thurlows’ soaring guitar and vocal work (the latter, compared almost
inevitably to that of Florence Welch, is in reality far closer to
Shirley Manson’s). On songs such as Scarlet and recent single You’re
Early, the fusion was compelling.
This was a night where potential – but not
consistency - came to the fore. 2:54 showed that they are capable of
creating a substantial and impressive wall of sound. If the intricacies
that adorn it are obscured, however, it risks becoming a barrier between band and audience.
Much is made of the doom surrounding Chelsea
Wolfe’s music, but there is a spark that shines brilliantly amidst that
darkness. Unfortunately, a dodgy laptop and uncontained frustration
meant that tonight it was snuffed out before it had the chance to
properly take flame. When it does, however, Wolfe is going to have
everyone’s attention.
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