“Some of the tapes had glitter in them, but there may be none left,” Grace explains, sitting beside the makeshift merch table in one of the smaller chambers of Distant Castle. A cute quartet of tapes was arranged beside her, the blank spots on the cover design a comparatively incongruous sight; between the band name and the top of the tape one could find the greatest square inch-age of undecorated space in the entire building. The room in which someone had decided to set up the merch table four or five hours after the party began was, among those in the house, the most conventionally illuminated; in the adjacent room cavity, the light fixture was instead repurposed as a staging ground for various miniature murders – a string of christmas lights was draped around the chandelier, on which a number of cheese puffs had been impaled, and a used strip of fly paper was suspended from one of the Chandelier’s arms.
Setting up in the dungeon of Distant Castle, a suitable mic was first located for Grace, and then fixed to a stand subsequently adjusted to suit her faerie stature. A nondescript amplifier embellished with an Orange brand white head (not of acne but instead compelling primeval action and sonic excavation) was nearby, and supported by a saw horse, the top surface of which doubled as a silverware drawer of unlikely instruments for exorcising and perverting the soon-to-be released emissions of Alex’s axe. After the crowd (a receptive and conversationally resourceful horde of bohemian PBR devotees) had entered the basement safely, and a bowl had been passed around to collect money for the touring band, the lights downstairs were added to the casualties of the chandelier above.
Produced by a ghost in garments of white, a soft wail, at first undetectable, pierces the room, only becoming perceptible as it slightly changes pitch. Grace’s soul seeps out into the PA system, a call, a knocking, or a hand extending out, a shattered heart escaping as a will-o’-the-whistle through a splintered slit in the glass Dørknob of another world. The wail escalates, peaking as the threshold is torn apart. The guitar drone pours out, inundating the audience, and inducing a deafening stillness, the unwound vibrations channeled by the crowd at a speed such that all is centered, chaos converging from the detonated tendrils of the drone’s sepulchral tones. Alex’s axe, tapped at the back of the neck with a metal slide, generates the oppressive gloom tides drowning the room. Grace’s bruised spirit and the tenebrous sea take turns, a pedal suddenly stomped at intervals to behead the axe and deliver it from the state of monotonous anguish, terminate the terra-ble tones, and instantly evaporate the waters so that the specter present may showcase its chilling introspection. The intricate aural entanglement as a whole, expressed though unresolved by supernatural interference, are communicated in crippled scales of notes and frantic backwards hyper-crawls that pause and shock the room in the silence between them. Despite the sudden and surprising aspects of the universally cathartic performance, the audience is able to precisely sense the end of each song/purging, the crisp conclusion, the Dør shut in obedience to unspoken prescriptions of horror doses governing the song lengths. Before witnessing this performance, I would have thought it unfathomable that expression so foreign could be channeled with such apparent intimacy and reception, the darkness of the room identified as an embodiment of the absence of physiological separation amongst those present. The next song, the next subterranean lament, begins with a metal bolt or other tidbit scratched against the steel coil segments past the guitar bridge. A spoon, a wand, is brought to the neck to produce dextrous silver calculated clanks, pausing at certain angles to free strings for plucking – the resurfaced creature of the song thrust back down into onyx waves. In the most violent string sections, Alex kneeling, rocking side to side, Grace the specter shouts, viscerally, expelling from the diaphragm to dislodge the stabbing implements shot into her by the guitar strumming and scratching, shouts not of martial distress, but of one who is home alone in their body trying to scare away terrors on their way in. My neighbor forms claws with her hands, leaning backwards and surrendering to the undertow, her body a bag warped in the winds whipping off the speaker banks. His back no longer to Grace, Alex casts his attention to the side, and raises the axe above his head, slamming the strings directly into the ceiling. The drone rings, Grace sings, and the song’s cycle short-circuits.
“Nightmom is next. I can’t think of a better name than Nightmom.” Grace smiles. The audience is lit again, albeit minimally, from a light buried in the ceiling. A lampshade had at one point been fixed with blue streamer-like tape beneath the bulb, though now the covering hangs sideways. A few feet closer to the stairs the ceiling has been patched with a large sheet of metal with holes like a cheese grater, which reflects the blue tint of the tape salvaging the lampshade, and is secured at the corners with menacing hooks. A shadow appears on the surface of this retired torture device, slim, and swaying slightly. Nick’s guitar has begun to dance below, and the audience joins in, the explanation for the interplay of intercepted light on the cheese grater ceiling reinforcement above. Drøm’s appreciation for their fellow performers becomes apparent from their movement at the first sign of Nick’s melting black and blues. A track from the Domino/Girlswamp single released last week launches the set into action. The crowd enthusiastically acclimates to Nick’s guitar tone, a warm vintage embrace punctuated at times with pensive encumbered punk strumming. As the drums kick in, the man to my right begins tapping along in time, as everyone in the room passionately nods along, irresistibly propelled by the beat. Travis’ wingspan contracts and expands to breathe with the rhythm, signaling dynamic moments to the audience so that all may respond accordingly with their choice of lurch, jump, rattle, or roll. At the beginning of “Sister’s Cool”, the vivid oil and grease painted finger picking stuns the audience, though the admiration-inspired inactivity is soon replaced by a dancing whirligig. Alex and Grace stand behind me, and alternate between linking hands and swirling whimsically and bopping on their own, bodies wiggling with the bouncing noodlish melody of the guitar. At the mic to the left of the drum set, Travis announces the song’s spoken lyrics with a grin of wistful pride. The guitar ramps up, and the mic is abandoned to keep up with subdivisions on the ride cymbal, at a speed such that whole arm motion outweighs any finger action in the attempt to keep up. Members of the audience lean forward to brace themselves against the impact of the cascading chord avalanche towards the end of the track. As “Sister’s Cool” cools down, Nick sings gently underneath Travis’ second stint of announcing, and the two men’s voices intertwine to create a sweet slumberous sunset underneath the narration of a nostalgic dream.
“We’re Nightmom. We’re from Providence…Rhode Island.” Nick and Travis, the duo on stage, represented the two sides to an inversion; Travis’ gritted teeth and aggressive cymbal crashes coming across as Nick’s head-hung shoulder-hunched back and forth presence turned inside out. The band’s compelling combination of melodic country flavored guitar sections and meteoric groove chord choreography combined evoked a raw appreciation and tangible energetic participation from the audience. In the dungeon of Distant Castle, Nightmom took us under their wing, and resurrected a dusty fossil of living breathing loving grit teething rock and roll, in the most honest and heartfelt fashion.
Drøm før du Dør is on tour to promote the release of their first album, “glitter”. Nightmom’s second full-length release will be available this July.
