I expected goth. I did not expect GOTH.
Walking into Revolution Hall to see She Wants Revenge and Rosegarden Funeral Party was like being whisked back to my teenage years at the amazingly shitty Club Metro in Rubidoux, CA.
I was 19, an awkward bag boy, doing my slutty little dances, thinking I was a god amongst men for getting to first base, and presumably embarrassing myself in ways that would haunt a more emotionally developed person. The music was dark, the eyeliner was thick, and everyone looked like they knew something about sex that the rest of us had yet to figure out.
Apparently, not much has changed.
Every flavor of goth showed up, and every flavor was hot as hell. Mall goths. The Craft clones. I even spotted a cyberpunk in her native habitat. There was one dude wearing a green hoodie with a cartoon character on it, but I guarantee he still had his Docs on.
Meanwhile, here I was, a respectable-enough six in my checked Vans slip-ons and a Rock the Bells hoodie. Sure, I was wearing black, but I felt less like a goth and more like an interloper who’d accidentally wandered into a goth club networking event.
Thankfully, the bands were good enough to distract from my wardrobe deficiencies.
Rosegarden Funeral Party opened the evening, and my immediate thought was that I should watch Wayne’s World again. They had some serious Crucial Taunt energy, which is a perfectly reasonable observation until you realize that it makes you a crucial taint. Because these Texans kicked ass.
Leah Lane had exactly the sort of commanding, theatrical power you want from a goth frontwoman, delivering the goods with the kind of presence that makes you believe she’s probably ruined someone’s life through a combination of eye contact and a well-timed text message. Bass player Ben Nelson maintained the appropriate level of mystery, while the Dylan Stamas’ mustache was all the credentials required to rock a kit that hard.
The band was genuinely stoked to be on the road with She Wants Revenge, and their praise for the headliners was effusive. But after delivering a journeyman-level set of their own, they had absolutely no business calling themselves kids. If this is the next generation of goth, the scene is in perfectly capable hands. Or black-painted fingernails. Whatever.
Then She Wants Revenge took the stage and reminded Revolution Hall why the show was sold out.
With light bars slicing through the fog and enough atmosphere to make even the straightedgers trip balls, the band delivered immaculate spooky vibes. They rolled through nearly 20 songs of maximum sexual tension, cursed romance and emotional dysfunction, the kind that reminds you of making out with someone that tasted like cloves outside a nightclub.
The synths slithered, as did singer Justin Warfield. Adam Bravin’s bass throbbed. The lighting did its best to make everyone look like they were having an existential crisis in an expensive music video. She Wants Revenge hit every pose required by the unofficial goth club membership bylaws, and the audience responded like a room full of people who’d spent the last 20 years waiting for someone to finally understand their Myspace profiles. Rebecca Rotten and Danny Death were in heaven.
All the goth kids went fucking wild, and for good reason. She Wants Revenge knows exactly what it does well: moody, danceable music that sounds like a bad decision made at 1:30 a.m. 18 songs later, with their most famous track, Tear You Apart, ripping through the air, the band’s commitment to the seductive, shadowy aesthetic was as convincing as ever.
Warfield’s fit frame also suggested that spending a career making music this rhythmically insistent might qualify as a workout plan.
And me? I was still there in my Vans, wearing the wrong hoodie, enjoying the hell out of it.
For one night, Revolution Hall became the goth club I remembered, only with better sound, fewer questionable flooring decisions and a considerably better chance of making it home without getting into a fight in the parking lot.
Rosegarden Funeral Party proved they were more than worthy of the opening slot. She Wants Revenge reminded everyone why their particular brand of dark, dance-floor seduction still works. And I got to revisit my awkward teenage years without having to squeeze into my old pants or explain to anyone why I was hanging around Club Metro in the first place.
All in all, a damned solid night. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some checked Vans to put away and a sudden urge to revisit The Craft