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.