Winona Fighter bounded onto the stage at the Black Heart in Camden to rapturous applause and proceeded to rock the fuck out for the next hour and a half. The Nashville punk-rock trio proceeded to play all the songs from their debut album – My Apologies to the Chef – plus some extras including a rather contentious cover.
This was the band’s first trip to the UK, and first gig in London before hitting the stage at the Slam Dunk Festival at the weekend. They were dripping with attitude and gratitude.
Led by the dynamic Coco Kinnon on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Austin Luther on bass, Dan Fuson on lead guitar, they turned up the energy to 11.
Kicking off with ‘You Look Like a Drunk Phoebe Bridgers’ Coco strutted across the stage with a dizzying intensity of speed and authority and the audience screamed along to every word including the iconic
‘Go ahead I let you take the first punch, Cause honey I know you ain’t got much’
The band blazed their way through album highlights – ‘R U FAMOUS’, ‘ATTENTION’ more crowd sing-alongs from ‘I Think You Should Just Leave’ including:
‘Hope you know I love you, But I don’t really like you’
The electric atmosphere continued with Coco excitedly talking to the audience and explaining that she is usually full of rage and sadness in the US, but in the UK she is smiling because it’s such a different atmosphere, she also let us in on the fact that cunt is one of her top three favourite words and she can’t really say it in America.
Further rock ‘n’ roll anarchy ensued with ‘JUMPERCABLES’, a catchy indie-punk anthem that’s fun and fiery in equal measure and had the whole club jumping, Dan providing blistering guitar solos and Austin providing driving bass.
It’s also evident that they really care about their fans by including ‘NYC’ from their 2022 ‘Father Figure‘ EP on the setlist due to one’s person’s DM request to hear the song in the UK.
Further musical stonkers included ‘Johnny’s Dead’ and ‘I’M IN THE MARKET TO PLEASE NO ONE’, both heartfelt songs turning rage into catharsis, with evidence of Influences from Green Day, No Doubt and Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam.
Then they played an exhilarating cover of Blur’s ‘Song 2’, which went down a storm. They explained they were apprehensive about the cover as apparently in Manchester one bloke told them after the show that he liked their set but hates Blur, however adding to Austin that he had a nice bass, which led to further audience pub chants of ‘Get your bass out’ to Austin.
The camaraderie between the crowd and the band was very special throughout the show and the banter was on point as band and audience were in sync. In fact, Coco even stated that she usually has to bully the audience to get moshing, but in London we had already started moshing early. She even offered to house swap with us in case anyone wanted to go to the US right now, but unfortunately there were no takers. The circle pits continued throughout the set and ramped up the raucous energy that is the hallmark of a great show – no doubt this band will be playing much bigger venues soon.
‘DON’T WALLOW’ was another crowd pleaser and Coco made an impassioned plea for us all to follow our dreams, because life is short.
The set ended with the electric ‘HAMMS IN A GLASS’, which included Coco crowd-surfing the audience and plenty more moshing!
In a world full of compromise, Winona Fighter embodies the fact that rage still very much matters. As Coco says:
“I feel like we’re taught to suppress our anger, whether it’s to do with what’s going on in the world or in our lives. And that’s so lame. Why are we so okay with people being sad and anxious, and not okay with people having an outlet to be angry? That just blows my mind. I think if more people were able to be angry, maybe everyone would be a little happier.”
A top-notch gig as a gig should be sweaty bodies moshing in a dark club, righteous fury and boundless energy, fun crowd interaction combined with anthemic choruses. I think the future of punk rock is in pretty safe hands.
Catch them at Slam Dunk Festival
24th May – Slam Dunk South
25th May- Slam Dunk North
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