Saturday night was certainly the all-release-night, as Tennis System, just like United Ghosts, was celebrating the release of their debut record ‘Teenagers’ at the Satellite.
Although frontman Matty Taylor said at one point that people should come closer to the stage as they were ‘not so loud tonight’, they were extremely loud. Actually, their crushing-skull wall of noise filled right away the room, building, distortion over distortion, a wild monster, that was hardly letting the poppy and calm melodies escape from this thunderous madness.
But there certainly were melodies, catchy like in their first single ‘Hey we tried’, a song, that, with its dreamy vocals and loud psychedelia, was reminding me a little bit the sort of atmosphere produced by last year’s hit ‘Expectation‘ by Australian psychedelic rockers Tame Impala, whereas others had something Wavves could have played.
Their twitter description says ‘If My Bloody Valentine & Sonic Youth had a baby with The Kinks it would be named Tennis System’ … and it is quite a bold and interesting way to describe their sound! But if the long trash-discordant Sonic Youth-style jams were there, it was nevertheless often difficult to hear the announced-Kinks-like melodies in all this messy chaos, as the band seemed to have been much more interested by doing a great deal of ‘sabotage’ with even more noise,… but nobody was complaining though!
Certainly, you have to be aware than listening to Tennis System on record cannot prepare you to the live experience, the sound was way more ferocious and aggressive, the wall of noise thicker than the fog they were spreading on stage before starting their set, and the extended distorted psychedelia was more gigantic, thanks to the non-stop pedal action of Matty Taylor’s guitar, whose psychedelic effect was only reinforced by the stroboscopic lights.
The band which, beside Taylor, consists of Misha Bullock on drums, Christopher Norman on lead guitar, and Guylaine Vivarat on bass, and another person on synth for a few songs, moved a few months ago from Washington DC to Los Angeles, which, according to what they have said, offered them a new life and a much stronger following. They sure have made the right choice.
Setlist
Snowden
Technicolour Blind
With no name
We will meet again
Hey, we tried
You & me VS
Arcane
Lovers and Fake
Friends
Try to Hide
Dead Honey