I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: October 7, 2019] The Distillers [rescheduled from June 1 & August 14]

The Distillers and Starcrawler were supposed to play a show at Union Transfer on June 1.

I bought tickets because I wanted to see Starcrawler–a band whose live show is becoming legendary.  I thought I didn’t even know The Distillers.  This turned out not to be true.  About a year earlier I had watched an NPR Field Recording with Brody Dalle.

Dalle (who is Australisn, which is hard to imagine given her speaking/singing voice which has no accent) has been in a bunch of bands.

First was The Distillers who broke up in 2006.
Then she formed Spinnerette who put out a couple of records until roughly 2011.
Then she did a solo album in 2014.
She has done all kinds of guest appearances, especially with Queens of the Stone Age.

Then she reconvened The Distillers in 2018.

I listened to a couple of their songs and was pretty excited to go to a old good punk show with a legendary singer.

Then the show was postponed: “Brody has a herniated disc and can not stand. She’s at the hospital getting treatment now.”

They rescheduled it for August 14.  And a few days before that show I received an email: “Andy was in a really bad accident a few days ago that resulted in two very deep gashes a broken middle finger and a concussion.”

Holy cow, I wasn’t sure if they were even going to try to come back after that.  But they did.  And what a show they put on!

After really enjoying the new opening band Death Valley Girls, the intense punk folks moved in.  I had been pretty close to the stage, and it soon got very crowded.  The lights went down and the stage music (“No Regrets” by Edith Piaf) played as the four band members came out on stage.

And then they started playing.

“Sick Of It All” blasted out of the speakers and within seconds I was lifted a few inches off the ground by the press of bodies and I quickly made my way off to the side of the slam dancers.

Brody sounded fantastic–her voice rough and gnarly but always melodic.  She sounded intense and very punk.  So it was fun whenever she spoke and was quite pleasant.

The band was super tight as well.  I couldn’t really see Tony Bevilacqua on the far side of the stage but his guitar sounded great.  I almost never saw Andy Granelli (or his hand) behind the drums, but obviously I could hear and feel him.   I was pretty much in front of Ryan Sinn on bass and he added some great backing vocals like in “I Am a Revenant.”

Then of course there was Brody up front looking bad ass and awesome.

Brody didn’t really move around all that much.  That may have been because of the back injury or maybe she just doesn’t move all that much.  neverthless, she commanded everyone;s attention.

I was really impressed with how tight they were, especially keeping in mind the various injuries they’d recently suffered.  The songs are especially complex, but they are fast with some dramatic shifts and they were always in sync.

There was more crowd surfing than possibly any show I’ve been at before.

The bulk of the songs came from their last album (2003’s Coral Fang), like “Die on a Rope” with the infectious “way oh way oh” chant.

Although the beginning of the set was mostly songs from their earlier albums like “Oh Serena” from their debut.

The crowd knew all of the songs.  There was much singing and dancing.

I appreciated that it wasn’t all fast.  There were some slower parts like in “The Gallow is God.”  Of course slower didn’t mean the songs were any less intense.

One thing that absolutely messed with the flow of the show was that between every song every band member tuned their guitar or bass–for a pretty long time it seemed.  If their instruments were that badly out of tune by the end of the song you’d think we’d have heard it.  And I don’t THINK their songs have all kinds of alternate tunings or anything.

Whatever the case, they sounded terrific, so I guess it was worth it.  It just seemed odd to slow things down so much while everyone was pumped up.

They played one new song (they officially released two new songs in 2018) called “Man vs. Magnet” which has me excited for their new album.

Brody made a few jokes about the delays they had in Philly and they seemed to be pretty happy to have finally knocked this show out.

As a special gift to us, the band played “Gypsy Rose Lee” from their debut.  She said its the first time they’ve played it in something like 16 years.  So that was a treat and people around me were pretty excited to hear it.

After 17 songs they left for an encore.

They came back and played “Drain the Blood” then they played “The Hunger.”  When they started the slow opening the crowd went berserk.  The girl next to me almost started cryuing shouting “Thank you!”

I loved being a part of this show that made everybody so happy.

Markit Aneight had a full show video too

SETLIST

1. Sick of It All $$
2. Oh Serena ⊗
3. Seneca Falls $$
4. Die on a Rope ¢
5. I Am a Revenant $$
6. L.A. Girl ⊗
7. Dismantle Me ¢
8. Hall of Mirrors ¢
9. City of Angels $$
10. Man vs. Magnet
11. The Gallow Is God ¢
12. Beat Your Heart Out ¢
13. Love Is Paranoid ¢
14. For Tonight You’re Only Here to Know ¢
15. Coral Fang ¢
16. Gypsy Rose Lee (first time live since 2004) ⊗
17. The Young Crazed Peeling $$
    encore
18. Drain the Blood ¢
19. The Hunger ¢

¢ Coral Fang (2003)
$$ Sing Sing Death House (2002)
⊗ The Distillers (2000)