[Savannah, Georgia > Northampton, Massachusetts] I don’t know when I transitioned to darkwave everydayallday. I’d blame the pandemic but more fair to say the darkwave was an appropriate landscape for me to endure the pandemic. I’d blame the West Coast and its allegiance to the rave scene but the southern band Lost Sounds is what reignited my teenage passion for industrial music, i.e., dark electronic music. I’d blame my niece for insisting that Spotify is better than owning your own music. That’d be a fair blame because it’s true that Spotify immediately pegged me and led me down a deep whirlpool of darkwave that ended at Boy Harsher. It was fall 2019 and BrightShards and I no longer spoke. I was distraught and so alone in the world, I made myself get two cats to complicate my life. They did. … Anyway, I was smitten after the first song. It was undeniable that “pain makes the rhythm, breaks the rhythm.” NiceButAlsoDangerous doesn’t understand why dark music comforts me. It always has. Bluegrass just makes me angrier jah. This band has a gorgeous aura of deviance, escapism, dark urban spaces. Minimal beats that insist that you turn your head left and right. I always mistakenly claim they’re from LA. When I saw they were coming to Portland, I decided it was absolutely necessary to break my attempt to move past the two-year pandemic dry spell by attending shitty shows. NiceButAlsoDangerous insisted on accompanying me although it was clear he’d be miserable the entire time, as he was. It’s true I hadn’t been in a ‘scene’ for years but the scene was extraordinarily delicious. The people a few people back in line from us had caught a picture of the band at Bamboo Sushi just before – they’re not digital automans jah. Inside, extremities of gay leather glam glory. They were as good live as recorded – incredibly sexy synth with weird eagle screams and the absolutely central dark droney female vocals. They’ve got the 80s minimalist electronics with Joy Division and some lush goth. They covered Chris Isaak – I forget the song – I, like the crowd, was super hyped – even NiceButAlsoDangerous was jumping – he claimed afterwards it was only to mock the crowd (“if I was in this band, I’d do heroin to forget I was in this band”). The crowd could care less NiceButAlsoDangerous.
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