Live Review: Slow Crush and Graywave | The Flapper Birmingham | 18/04/2023
Belgium based ethereal soundscape weavers Slow Crush are back for a run of headline dates with Graywave in tow.
Graywave
Jess Webberly’s shoegaze project Graywave have quickly been making a name for themselves on the U.K. scene. Crafting dark, atmospheric shoegaze and dreampop influenced compositions, their claustrophobic soundscapes and enthralling full band live performances have brought them a lot of buzz. Based around Birmingham, tonight they play a hometown show and the basment room is getting busy as they take to the stage with the piercing synth introduction of Build. Graywave play through most of 2022’s Rebirth EP, throwing in ‘Before’ (from 2021’s Planetary Shift) and new single ‘Blur Into One’, which sounds particularly powerful in a live setting.
Tonally everything sounds fantastic, even in such a small space Graywave manage to feel massive with huge walls of sound sculptured from the guitars and bass. Heaps of synth samples with the technical and precision drumming adding vast textural layers underneath. Jess’ beautifully haunting and ethereal vocals are soft sung and saturated in effects when the songs call for it. Unfortunately however there were some technical issues, seemingly coming from the front of house end. Jess’ vocals and the backing vocals were unusually quiet, regularly getting lost in the mix, overwhelmed by the instrumentals after the first few tracks. Nobody likes unintentional wailing feedback, but you can absolutely go too far the other way trying to alleviate it. Those close to the stage might have had a better time having the extra vocals through the stage monitors, but further back in the room they were tough to hear. Whilst not world ending technical issues, this was honestly a little bit of a let down. For the moments when they were firing on all cylinders it was easy to understand why Graywave are so highly sought after. By all means, Graywave put on an absolute blinder of a performance, but the front of house issues held tonight’s performance back from what should have been truly great.
Photo Credit: Taya Llewellyn (@synthesizephoto)
Score: 7/10
Slow Crush
For a Tuesday night, this 200 capacity basement room is surprisingly busy, Slow Crush have managed to draw quite the crowd for their headline show in Birmingham. It’s rightfully so, the Belgian quartet have regularly put on fantastic performances for years now and tonight’s show is no different. Playing a balance between their two albums Aurora and Hush, with slightly more focus on the latter, Slow Crush radiate as they conjure up their varied dreamy and crushing soundscapes. Opening the show with their most recent single ‘Blue’, the live renditions of these tracks are packed with energy, each member of the band clearly still loving playing second of them. At this point the setlist is tightly honed, with the newer material about eighteen months old now, so it’s safe to say Slow Crush have mastered performing these tracks in a live environment. The setlist seamlessly moves between the newer and older material, opting to play most of the offerings from Hush in sequential order from the album itself, tracks from Aurora frame either end of this block of songs from Hush.
Sounding just as clean and expressive as their recorded counterparts, the instrumentals are luscious and expansive. The guitar tones are drenched in reverb and vary between other dreamy effects and finely crafted layers of distortion, the bass is warm and encapsulating without being completely overwhelming and the drums are crisp, clear and precise. Isa Holiday’s soft sung, dreamy vocals fit perfectly for the most part, but much like the opening band, there are some mild technical issues from the front of house. Whilst not as frequent or as noticeable as Graywave, perhaps due to Slow Crush’s airier and less oppressive instrumentals, there are still some moments where Holiday’s vocals start to dip in the mix and almost get lost in the shuffle. Thankfully these moments are few and far between for the headliners. There is still a pretty major hiccup as ‘Rêve’ starts where the entire front of house sound was muted for a good five seconds or so, leaving just the monitors on stage playing the introduction to the song before very obviously returning through the PA.
Once again, this is through no fault of Slow Crush themselves. They play their hearts out the entire set and shrug off the technical issues, not letting them get in the way of another stellar performance. Isa takes several moments between songs chatting to the crowd, expressing her love for Graywave opening for them all tour and their hometown crowd as well to rounds of applause for both. Playing a concise and well crafted set, Slow Crush breezes through their fifty minutes or so with ease. Closing tonight’s show with a bit more pace, the title track of Hush and Aurora opening track ‘Glow’ are certified bangers at this point, lending themselves as the perfect one-two-punch for a climactic finale. It’s damn near perfect timing as well, with the extra energy permeating the crowd for the last two songs, the tiny basement venue is on the verge of reaching peak heat as the ending moments of ‘Glow’ ring out and deteriorate. It feels like Slow Crush have maximised their time with Hush to impressive results and this tour feels like the perfect culmination of their time playing it. Hopefully the next album and touring cycle come soon enough so Slow Crush can continue their well deserved growth.
Photo Credit: Taya Llewellyn (@synthesizephoto)
Score: 8/10