GENGHAR AT THE EXCHANGE

October 2015

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Positioned by the Old Market roundabout, facing towards The Exchange, you’d have thought you might have stumbled into the beginnings of an underage disco as groups of rosy-cheeked adolescents roamed the pavement, cradling questionable canned substances, and with hoods pulled up over faces mingled with expressions of dread and excitement. You could taste the sense of reckless abandonment in the air - one pair even turned to us and innocently suggested we were all distant cousins in a desperate bid to gain entry.

Still, propositioning strangers aside, Pumarosa, the first support for Gengahr, was probably the biggest surprise of the night. They had a very hefty stage presence; combining theatrics with an interesting fusion of musical sampling, synth and a seductive front woman to boot, and erupting on to the stage in a haze of sequins, ripped jeans, toothbrush moustaches and string t-shirts, they were that fun mirage of styles that turn electronic indie, alike that of Beaty Heart, into gothic meditative dance. Up-coming hit ‘Priestess’, which takes on a similar weighty beginning as Lykke Li’s ‘I Follow Rivers’, is one that you need to check out - combining jangling, tropical timbres and xylophonic, skeletal taps with colossal vocal work.

Next up were Cash + David, whose new single ‘Bones’ has been hailed by DIY magazine as being ‘massive’ and it’s worth mentioning that Liz Lawrence (the band’s David), sung on Bombay Bicycle Club’s tour of their new album. The sound which she and Ross create in Cash+David however, has a much more bass-orientated judder - covering that unclassified dead ground between R&B, House, and electronic indie pop, bearing a resemblance to experimental-pop band, Grimes.

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After huddling between the four metres of outside space that stretched to include the metal gridded fence, an overloaded bench of woollen characters, and a leaking drainpipe, we sidled back in to catch Gengahr. Positioned in that unfortunate place that wasn’t the front, the middle or the back; we made room for the ongoing throng of human traffic that couldn’t quite decide whether they wanted to watch the band or use the toilet facilities.

Beginning their set with tracks which included their new hit ‘Heroine’, a song with an opening bass riff so prevalent that it seemed to span across a variety of artists and musical genres - including Silver Sound Pick Ups, ‘Lazy Eye’; ‘I Feel the Pain’ by Dinosaur Jr. and one might even go as far as to include Kelly Clarkson’s ‘My Life Would Suck Without You’ (check that one out) – Gengahr has come riding in on a wave of light-hearted summer spirit. But there’s a haunting duality to Gengahr’s sound; the soft, humming lullaby of tracks such as ‘Dizzy Ghosts’ and ‘Lonely as a Shark’ become encumbered by the grinding nebula of tracks ‘Bathed in Light’ and ‘Where I Lie’, giving the overall album, A Dream Outside a pervasive yet bemusing conclusion.

The four piece band continued their auditory soirée of sweet and sour with songs such as ‘Where I Lie’ and plenty of tracks from their new album including ‘Trampoline’ and ‘Dizzy Ghosts’- which thanks to the resonance of the tiny venue, achieved that overwhelming frequency that you can not only hear in your ears, but also your chest and your throat.

By their ninth song, Gengahr had the whole audience in the palm of their sweaty, sweaty hands, playing their song of the moment; ‘Fill My Gums With Blood’ which showcases simmering chords and raw, ricochets of guitar, muddled with those suggestive harmonies which at once seem both so exultant and yet so troubled.

They ended their set with ‘Bathed in Light’, closing track of their recent EP, before storming the stage with an encore of ‘Lonely as a Shark’ and ‘She’s a Witch’ to which everyone from the giddy crowd surfing teens, to the reflective locals at the back sang along to – and, even as the guys sauntered off the stage, there were still a few enduring chants of ‘one more song’.