JC
Music Memory Meaning #2
Diving through the surface of the music I’m listening to right now – then down into the depths of the songs that helped me make some sense of this life…
the MUSIC…
Pale Waves
KOKO 25.09.26
Camden’s KOKO is already the most romantic venue in the world, but with Pale Waves on stage, the shimmery gorgeousness of the ornamented venue becomes even more startling. The band open with Kiss Me Again, its melodies emerging like sugar-coated butterflies before melting like snow. The entire 15-track setlist is daze-inducing: Eighteen is more delicious than chocolate cake, Perfume is as dreamy as the most spine-tingly moments from the your favourite 80s films, and listening to There’s A Honey is like being injected with glitter. There’s such a warmth to Pale Waves’ music, and tonight everyone in KOKO feels cocooned – and connected – by that heat. It’s a truly magical sensation.
the MEMORY…
Machine Gun Kelly
Pryzm, Kingston 03.10.22
By the time I got to see Machine Gun Kelly play for the first time, I had long since become addicted to his Tickets To My Downfall and Mainstream Sellout records – but still his music hovered around guilty pleasure territory. It wasn’t easy to tell if there was a real artist beneath the singer’s cartoonish persona – and I just didn’t know how hard I should fight his corner when my friends rolled their eyes at the mention of his name. Not that I’m in any doubt now. In the time it took to deliver one short, stripped-down set, Colson Baker eradicated any uncertainty about his authenticity forever. On a candlelit stage, he did what very few arena performers can do and reshaped his songs in a way that made sense of much more intimate surroundings. Sure, his music became less in your face, but it became way more fragile too, and in it I heard a previously obscured rawness. Remember when Nirvana performed their MTV Unplugged set? This was Machine Gun Kelly’s equivalent.
the MEANING…
You Don’t Need To Be Perfect To Be Perfect
It’s not an easy thing to be fully yourself at any time – and this must be even more the case when there’s a massive collection of people watching you, hoping that you give them what they want. Machine Gun Kelly and Pale Waves singer Heather Baron-Gracie are similar in the sense that both can appear to find the process of communicating with a crowd quite awkward. When they talk, they don’t so in the practised, polished manner of politicians – instead they’re surprisingly self-conscious. But that’s why we connect to them on such a deeply personal level. They reveal their anxieties and insecurities to us, saying things that are important even if they can’t package those things as neatly as they might want to. They don’t paint themselves as perfect and that’s what makes them perfect.
Photo: Florelle Servageon