[ATTENDED: November 18, 2019] Lovelorn
Just after the Blushing set ended, a woman squeezed past me and put some stuff on the stage. Turns out she was Anna Troxell, bassist and vocalist for Lovelorn. A few moments later a guy with an enormous table full of gear climbed up on stage. That was Patrick Troxell, knob twiddler and drummer for Loverlorn.
And yes, this was the second band of the night where the band members were married.
Lovelorn formed out of the dissolution of Creepoid, a Philly punk band with a legendary history. When Lovelorn first assembled, it was with three of the members of Creepoid (singer guitarist Sean Miller did not join them). I was unfamiliar with Creepoid, but when I listened to them recently I rather liked them–shame they broke up.
they were a trio with guitarist Pete Joe Urban joining them. They played slow dreamy noisy pop like latter Jesus and Mary Chain. Somewhere between early 2018 and late 2019. Lovelorn became a duo and switched their emphasis to darkwave music.
There’s no guitar. Patrick makes all of the sounds on his table of gear. He also had a cymbal and possibly a snare drum–I couldn’t tell. Anna played bass on most of the songs, putting it down for one or two tracks. They both sang lead.
I’ve included a link at the bottom to their first show at Underground Arts when they were a trio.
This show was so vastly different it’ hard to imagine it was the same two main band members.
The sound was faster and louder. Anna pogoed a lot and played some really heavy bass.
I really couldn’t hear the vocals very well–which might have been because I was so close. Or maybe it was by design. I also don’t know any song titles. Patrick sang on this song with some nice ooh oohs from Anna.
Anna was really fun to watch as a lead singer. She smiled a lot and had this delightfully wicked smirk between lyrics. She also pogoed all the time.
Most of the songs were fast, although this one was pretty slow and trippy until the loud parts crashed in.
The band brought their own lighting effect–a kind of flashing strobe light/disco ball thing which was especially evident here. It’s a shame that the basic light scheme was that terrible magenta. It made their whole stage vaguely unpleasant and soiled the strobe effect somewhat. You can see in this picture that without the red light, their set would have been much more enjoyable.
Anna put down the bass for a song in the middle. I definitely missed the low end without her playing. For the last song, Anna put on a homemade hat that said Lovelorn on it. Without her bass she danced and sang. Right at the end of this clip she climbed down the stairs and sang from the floor Anna was literally right next to me and the woman up front who was filming their whole set definitely has me in the background of a lot of her video.
Lovelorn was a little out of place sandwiched between two shoegaze bands. Their sound was interesting, but I actually enjoyed their sound as a three piece better. I like the “dreary psychedelia” better than the darkwave, I guess.
Check out their show from Underground Arts where they sound very very different. I almost wonder if they were booked for this show based on what they sounded like last year.
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