Gurr at the Lexington
It’s nearly a year since my last Gurr fix at SXSW. I find their brand of no nonsense energetic garage rock to be an adrenaline injection into my old weary heart.
The combination of good songs and the general sense of them being mates and having a ball playing songs for a living, is exactly what I imagined being in a band would be like when I was young. It’s the greatest compliment that when I see them play, I get exactly the same buzz as I do when I listen to Teenage Kicks.
Tonight was a rescheduled gig, after Andreya hurt her back. As their show involves jumping around a lot (or like tonight, being dropped by the crowd when crowd surfing!) It was an understandable cancellation. Luckily, I could still make the new date. I would have been gutted if I couldn’t
Entering the stage to the music of Harry Potter, they played a mixture of songs from In My Head and their 2019 E.P. She Says. It’s probably the first tour when they’ve had enough songs to cut some from the set list. This meant favourites such as Computer Love were dropped. But the set list contained enough of the more dancy In My Head Tracks with the more mature writing of She Says. The set list worked for this old man. There was enough pauses to give me a chance to catch my breath from my dad dancing (what do you call dad dancing when you’re not a dad?)
Generally, I don’t find German a particularly nice sung language and this is despite some the best choral music ever written being German. But I always look forward to Gurr singing in German. My none existent German means the songs are stripped of meaning and they work simply on the pure exuberant energy of Andreya and Laura. It’s Gurr at the rawest and best.
As always, there was a lot of chat. Tonight, mainly about Happy Potter and the lack of German wizards. But they mentioned they had been using the train for this tour as an alternative to driving. It’s nice to see bands thinking about the environment and trying to make sure they enjoy the experience of touring.
Hopefully, they will hit the U.K. over the summer. I don’t want to have to wait another year before I see them play again.
Support tonight was from Wych Elm, a Bristol band who I saw a few weeks ago. Tonight, the sound was better and the singer’s vocals clearer. She also seemed to attack the vocals of Susan Smith (?) more than last time, giving it an edge I felt was missing from their last performance. They still sound like Goo / Dirty era Sonic Youth, which isn’t a bad thing. But they will have to find something a bit more distinctive as they don’t have Thurston to lift their songs to the level of being special. However, saying this, what they do, they do well and I will happily watch them again.