I generally try to avoid … generalizations but every rule has its exception and so I’m going to go ahead and throw this out there: even the most devoted and open-minded music aficionado has to do an occasional head slap at the genre-labels artists come up with. Think “tunes with a coffee-roasted darkness to them” or “chords that moves the air like glitter on adrenaline” (yes… real examples… I’m not creative enough to make that stuff up). Yes, we love music, but there is a limit to what sound can achieve. With that in mind, I approached The Growlers’ self-described “beach goth” music with a certain amount of hesitation… only to find myself a convert at the end.
The band is, first of all, super competent on stage. They dove right into their set and didn’t stop for air for over an hour. They had some sort of borderline psychedelic/macabre/entertaining video background playing on a screen behind them and a bubble machine. The best thing about the bubble machine, though, was that it was on its last legs, meaning the bubbles only did a half-hearted arc out of the machine before tumbling to destruction on the stage floor. So appropriate for the entire ambience.
The Growlers played a mix of new and old songs (they’re promoting a new album: Hung at Heart) and nailed every one of them. My favorite remains “Graveyard’s Full” but I also really enjoyed the band’s “lasty but nasty” song in their set: “One Million Lovers.”
Definitely worth checking out the record and checking out the band live if they come to a venue near you.