[ATTENDED: September 19, 2021] Kestrels
I had not heard of Kestrels. They are a trio from Halifax with several releases out.
According to the new release
Since 2008, Kestrels has been the primary project of singer/guitarist Chad Peck, who spends his time offstage as a high school English teacher. [Do his students know that their English teacher rocks?]
They played an excellent mix of loud and soft, with ripping solos, an excellent bass sound and cracking drums,
When they first started playing I actually couldn’t hear Peck’s voice at all. I was right up against the fence in front of the stage and assumed I was too close to hear the voices (that’s not a nice audio trick to play on people in the front). I backed up a few steps and could hear him better (they may have turned up the vocals, too).
Peck’s guitar playing was really fun–big distorted chords and then pulling back for some quiet guitar picking.
One of the more amusing moments was when the bassist (whose name I didn’t catch) asked if they could change the lights (they had been on that terrible red for a couple of songs). He said “I’m a ginger, anything but red.”
As they neared the end of their set, Peck said that J. Mascis played a solo on their first single from the new album. Obviously J. didn’t pop out, but Peck said he’d do his best Mascis-inspired playing and it was very easy to hear Mascis in Peck’s playing.
The songs were all really catchy and I knew I’d be buying at least their new CD [Peck was selling the merch so I got both CDs on sale]. What was interesting to me is that the album is a lot more shoegaze than came across live. In part I think it’s because of where I was standing (again, being too close). The guitar and bass were coming from the amps and to me it was bass on the right and guitar on the left, and the shoegaze component didn’t really come across.
But I loved the set and I really like the album as well. I think had I heard the album first I would have missed the shoegaze component live, but hearing it in this order, the shoegaze was like an extra bonus.
I’m really looking forward to exploring their back catalog.
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