We Found New Music With Sam Fischer, Christina Castle, Fever Joy, Holy Wars, Tuesday July 2nd 2019

Alyson Camus|July 4, 2019

Christina Castle, Fever Joy, Holy Wars, Sam Fischer, We Found New Music

Holy Wars

We Found New Music, hosted by Grant Owens, an A&R Scout at Elektra Music Group, features an interesting lineup of musicians every Tuesday at Madame Siam. For Grant’s birthday bash on July 2nd, Sam Fisher, Christina Castle, Fever Joy, and Holy Wars played a cool succession of genres for a happy and enthusiastic crowd.

Los Angeles via Australia Sam Fischer played the most stripped down set of the evening with soulful vocals and R&B-inspired guitar and keyboard. His neo-soul songs were layered with backup voices and Fischer’s falsetto while a few sing-alongs were coming from the crowd with plenty of right hands on hearts. He covered Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ with a feminine sensibility and plenty of vocal vibrations.

Christina Castle was another Australian young surprise who took the stage by storm and plenty of swagger. As a finalist of X Factor Australia a few years ago, she sounded unstoppable, just like the title of one of her 2012 single (’16 & Unstoppable’), singing bold and hooky pop songs with hip hop injected lines. She had sex appeal and the best moves, even when she stayed behind her keyboard to sing provocative and empowering anthems with lines like ‘I want to be your little monster’…

Fever Joy was a hard-hitting duo, which crushed the room in a series of thunderous bluesy riffs and a blue-flipping-hair singer with an attitude and a deep howl. Vocalist Avery Robitaille, guitarist Kevin Holm, and drummer Sean Baker had plenty a style and truly impressed the crowd with an electrifying set of pop-rock songs entitled ‘Crazy Love’, ‘Blue Moon’, ‘Milk and Honey’, ‘Cigarettes on Sunset’, ‘Shots’… delivered with an authentic conviction. She said they had just finished recording their first EP and everything in their in-your-face attitude was telling us they were ready to conquer the music world.

Holy Wars were headlining the night, and I believe everyone in the room will agree with me after such a stormy and visceral performance: they are aiming for the sky. Frontwoman and singer Kat Leon always delivers intense and sweaty performance but this night was one to remember with their familiar heavy synth-rock, which had been compared to a Siouxsie meets Suicide by the LA Times. You also could see her as a new Shirley Manson or Karen O – yes, she has that amount of stage charisma – and the ascension of Holy Wars to success doesn’t surprise me a bit: Billboard recently acknowledged their existence for their new video/single ‘Legend’. Their shows have always been breathtaking and a true photographs’ magnet, but Tuesday night may have beaten a few records,…I didn’t count how many of them were there! The band’s dark imagery and exorcism of pain through music have always tainted their explosive performances with a compelling sadness and inspiring resilience, and Kat’s screaming ‘I Hate Myself’ at the end of the show let a powerful flow of emotions land on the crowd, which was asking for more.

setlist

Oh Death
Holy Unholy
Chemical Love
I Can’t Feel a Thing
Legend
Back to Life
Born Dark
I Hate Myself
Nothing