Show Review: La Dispute, Gouge Away, and Slow Mass @ Thalia Hall, April 23 2019
La Dispute
Words and photos by Ari Jindracek
Tuesday, April 23rd, was a nice, cool day, not rainy as the forecast had promised the day before: a lovely day to guess who exactly on the Pink Line toward 54th and Cermak was getting off at the 18th Street stop based on their clothes. As probably the most boring-looking person who would end up waiting in line to see Slow Mass, Gouge Away, and headliner La Dispute (I’d just come from my day job, sue me), I could pick out fellow concert-goers by the metal-band font on their shirts and the dye in their hair. Of course, the closer I walked to Thalia Hall I could also pick them out by the way they wrapped around the corner, leaning against the stonework and talking to friends. As I sat down on a stoop, looking out at the church across the street while the guy next to me wolfed down a sandwich and the girl on my other side craned her neck around, looking for her friend, I was nearly vibrating with excitement.
Thalia Hall, inside, looks like a beautiful old theater I volunteered at in college (ironically, the one where my supervisor first told me about La Dispute, though I wouldn’t really sit down and listen to their music until this past February, and then every day between then and now) if you sandpapered the paint off the walls and tore out all the seats, which means it looks awesome. As I had left my day job early for this and didn’t bring a bag to check, I was able to make my way up to the barricade, stage left, and wait for the hour between doors opening at the first notes of Slow Mass’s set, while people trickled into the venue. I could already see the salt lamps and crystals set up on top of amps, mirroring the theme of crystals in La Dispute’s newest album, Panorama, which is just about a month old as of the time of writing this. (A three-word review of Panorama, by the way: heartwrenching, ethereal, familiar.)
Slow Mass
From the first looped introduction, played on guitar and then repeated at different speeds and pitches out of a machine, Slow Mass’s music filled the venue. There were maybe thirty seconds of quiet on stage during their whole set. When it wasn’t quiet, it was amazingly loud, and I don’t just say that as someone positioned right under a speaker: Slow Mass are made up of three guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer, with the lead guitarist and the bassist swapping off on vocals. The sheer number of instruments on stage meant that their sound was lush and full of chords. This made it nearly impossible, for me at least, to hear the vocals, but one got the sense that the instrumentation was the focus. The vocal melodies were soft and slow, atmospheric, with the harder sound coming from the instruments. While I listened, the wall of sound surrounding me, it felt cinematic; the image in my head was that of a panoramic view of a glacier (slow, massive) taken from a helicopter, the peace of the ice juxtaposed with the knowledge of the immensity of the thing. (If you’ll allow me to be poetic.)
Gouge Away
The mood of Gouge Away, the next band up after a speedy 15-minute turnaround, was completely different and had me smiling, almost involuntarily, within seconds. As someone who, admittedly, isn’t actually that hardcore, I haven’t been to a ton of shows where there’s a lot of metal screaming. As I watched the frontwoman of Gouge Away, Christina Michelle, double over again and again, screaming in that distinctive, raw punk-ish way (presumably, doubling over gave her more screaming power), I knew that was going to need to change. The instrumentals were the hard-and-fast type with rhythmic basslines and screaming guitars; they opened up a pit in seconds, and from my cushy barricade spot, I wanted to jump into the fray and get elbowed in the guts a few times. The energy in the music came on like a wave to the face. I feel like I almost barely registered Gouge Away’s set in my memory because I was too busy wondering if I could learn to scream like that, and making mental notes that I needed to look up their music when I got home. (P.S., I did, and it’s just as killer as it was live, although the energy of the crowd is absent.) From the beginning to the end of their set, Gouge Away were vivacious and engaging, and woke up a crowd tired at the end of the workday in the coolest possible way.
For those who hadn’t previously heard of La Dispute, I have two questions for you: are you kind of sad and angry? Do you know a lot about northern Michigan? If the answer to either of those is yes, my completely biased opinion is that you should listen to La Dispute. Their music features lyrics that range between the granular and the universal–for instance, the first song the band played upon taking the stage was about a specific instance where a body had been found near a highway, but also about grief and the fear of facing it. Unlike with Slow Mass and Gouge Away, I knew some of La Dispute’s music beforehand, so I knew what I would be getting into, approximately. The one thing I didn’t expect was the energy the band had on stage. The frontman of the band was constantly in motion: rocking back and forth while singing the sadder songs as if he needed to pull the words out like one might pull off a bandage; moving his legs in what my middle school gym teachers would call scissor jumps, first on stage left, then stage right; whirling around center stage, singing the whole time; climbing out toward the crowd, holding a microphone stand, almost to the point of jumping into the crowd. On stage, the other band members fed off of each other’s energy. Huge pits opened up to songs I hadn’t thought of as moshing songs. The music almost took a back seat to the dervish onstage, and I couldn’t actually look away for very long, not that I wanted to.
One non-musical thing about the show that I found important: the bands had partnered with local organization OurMusicMyBody, which works to raise awareness about sexual harassment and assault in music scenes, and were outspoken about the importance of this partnership throughout the night; OurMusicMyBody had set up a table right by the merchandise booth, and I saw dozens of people talk to the representatives, taking pins and papers and sometimes shirts, before they left for the night. The only points in the whole show when the crowd was absolutely silent were when La Dispute frontman Jordan stopped the show to talk about the partnership, and a second time, while making a different speech, when he quieted everyone so he could make sure that a fan talking to security was okay. In a music scene where so many people don’t feel safe and, in fact, aren’t safe, whether or not this was enough to mean anything is up to you, but I also know that it meant several more names on OurMusicMyBody’s mailing list, and it seemed to mean something to the performers.
Overall, this concert was probably the highest-energy show overall that I had ever been to, at least on behalf of the bands playing, and one of the only that had been willing to pull back the curtain on a dire issue in the scene. It is also the only one I’ve been to where the headliners outright refused an encore, telling the crowd to skip the performative aspect of it and just go home. The last song La Dispute played was one of my favorites of theirs, the one that I’ve woken up singing several times, and there was a point, while singing it in unison (hint, hint) with almost everyone in the theater, where I felt right at home. Even if they didn’t play “King Park.”
Ari Jindracek almost cried during La Dispute’s set and they aren’t ashamed of it.
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