Caroline Rose and Hammydown
9:30 Club, Washington, April 14, 2023
There are some artists whose work I follow closely before I have the chance to see them in concert, and some artists of whom I’ve been peripherally aware, but never delved into until the moment strikes.
Caroline Rose is among the latter. I’ve been aware of her/their music and its general shape for the past few years, but I wasn’t paying close attention until recently the
New York Times published a profile of their most recent album
The Art of Forgetting and the personal heartbreak that instigated it.
It was on the fly when a ticket became available in the neighborhood, and I snatched it up, biking out into the cool evening air of Washington in April. And Caroline Rose proved that they not only have abundant songs of interest and depth, but also a disarming sense of stagecraft. I fancy myself a bit of an amateur anthropologist in a nightclub setting. At the Caroline Rose show, I was not the oldest member of the audience; there were a few who were certainly in their 60s, but I was certainly one of the most boringly conventional looking people there, even in a Flying Nun T-shirt.
The important item is that Caroline Rose got their start making what I guess could be called queer club bangers. They’re active, rambunctious, pop songs that obscure the gender and sexual binary. And the crowd was overwhelmingly in their 20s, some possibly younger and some a bit older. A lot of queer women, a lot of gender-bending attire, and a lot of couples holding hands shyly or amorously in a welcoming space. Amusingly, my own research was complemented by an impromptu chat with a tall awkward black guy who was doing an assignment for a university music appreciation class. He admitted he was a STEM major and this wasn’t his kind of music, but he was interviewing listeners to ask for adjectives that described their relationship to the music.
Opening act,
Hammydown is a three-piece, whose lead singer and songwriter Abby is a friend of Caroline Rose. Their set reminded me of Kristin Hersh if she was leading Weezer. This is actually a good thing. A mix of haggard relationship songs, butt-rock guitar solos, and shameless riffing out of a Cheap Trick back catalogue. Between songs, Abby gave a passionate defense of queer and trans rights and spoke about their anxieties as the tour progressed southwards, but also told lighthearted stories about being a substitute teacher in elementary school. Abby indicated that a record made with Caroline Rose is forthcoming, but this was actually Hammydown’s first-ever tour.
Hammydown performed in front of a stained glass window, which they carried with them on tour. Reportedly the artwork is from a trans artist in their hometown, whom they were sharing with the audience. By contrast, the Caroline Rose set had them in front of four vertical screens behind which their band played, while they strummed acoustic guitar and played keyboards while the screens served as scrims against which visuals were cast, behind the band showing the members playing in silhouette, or with home movies from Rose’s childhood, especially with their grandmother.
It was a striking visual effect, especially when Rose held a flashlight above themself in a BYO spotlight æsthetic behind which the band was playing.
About the songs themselves? The main set was overwhelmingly from the new album
The Art of Forgetting, about the breakup and heartbreak and the loss of beloved family members, which was played in full although not in order. Generally Rose would start on acoustic guitar and the band would swell in with amplified keyboards and swelling backup vocals accentuating the desolation and confusion and misplaced lust, starting with the tormented “Love/Lover/Friend.”
Despite the dour content Rose has complete command of the stage and the audience. At some point on “The Kiss,” they maneuvered into the audience, singing all the while, before doing a trust fall from the bar at the 9:30 and crowd-surfing to the stage, a move of rock star bravado which I can honestly say I’ve never seen, especially from this kind of show. But much of the opening set was thematically somber, even if tinged with dark humor, like the ode to their therapist, “Jill Says.”
“Miami,” which morosely notes the “beautiful people in a beautiful place,” while the narrator is “taking up space,” is the closest thing that this record gets to a pop-friendly moment, but other than this, nothing in the 9:30 Club main set was exactly celebratory. That is, until the end of the main set. For the encore, the scrims came down and the band joined Caroline Rose on the main stage, and the club bangers from the earlier records emerged. “Now it’s time for the greatest hits,” they exclaimed ironically, as the band launched into the encore with “More of the Same,” from 2018’s
Loner, which also provided the banger “Jeannie Becomes a Mom,” two of their most-streamed songs. The four-song encore from
Loner and 2020’s
Superstar, with “Feel the Way I Want” and the set-closer “Do You Think We’ll Last Forever?” was a stark and exuberant contrast with the main set from
Art of Forgetting, with crowd singalongs, dancing, and communal celebration.
That’s when I started getting a greater gestalt of the whole show and stage experience: the path from pain and trauma to loss to resilience and ultimate celebration. That is not an uncommon arc of emotions but it’s one that is perhaps most personally resonant to queer and trans audience. So it was all in all a satisfying show despite my relative lack of knowledge about Rose’s back catalogue, and I came out with a better sense of their whole musical and artistic sensibility.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2023 02:32PM by zwirnm.
