I Just Read About That…

[DID NOT ATTEND: September 20, 2023] Movements / Mannequin Pussy / Softcult / Heart to Gold

I actually didn’t know about Movements until Mannequin Pussy announced that they were opening for them on this tour.   I love Mannequin Pussy and am excited to hear their newer songs live.  So I grabbed a ticket–even though I knew I had a ticket to the sold out Death Grips show the same night.

I figured there was a pretty good chance that Death Grips wouldn’t play (they tend to be flaky about tours, but apparently not this one), and maybe I’d get to go to this show which seemed likely to sell out (it hasn’t yet).

Then I discovered that Death Grips doesn’t have an opener and their shows are fairly short (90 minutes or so).  And I realized there was a chance I could still see some of this show (the venues are less than ten minutes apart).  So it all depends on how long Death Grips play for and how late they start.

Then a few days before the show, I decided that I didn’t want to see Death Grips anymore.  After a couple of rough, pushing a shoving shows, I realized that I didn’t want to spend 90 minutes in a crowd at Franklin Music Hall with abrasion and aggression non-stop for 90 minutes while the crowd slam danced all around me and the stage was bathed in red.  Maybe had I not seen Igorrr and Boris this week, I would have been more up for it, but it just felt not fun.

So then I thought maybe I’d go to this show.  But then things were going on at home and I realized that based on when Mannequin Pussy said they were going on (8:55) that Softcult, who I really wanted to see, wouldn’t be playing for very long.  And I didn’t think MP would get a very long set either.  So I just said meh to the whole thing and stayed home.

If things played out how I originally intended:

I knew I would miss Heart to Gold.

They’re a trio from Minnesota who play grungey punk with a screaming lead singer.  They even have a song called Tigers Jaw, obviously a nod to the band

I knew I would miss Softcult.  They were on the bill with Destroy Boys and Pinkshuft last year that I missed.  About them I wrote:

Softcult is the one sonic exception to the punk evening.  Softcult is a duo from Canada.  Their number one song on Spotify, “Love Song” is a soft woozy shoegaze song–it’s wonderful.  Their other songs play more with a hard/soft dynamic and grungy attitude.  The band comprises twin siblings Phoenix and Mercedes Arn-Horn who are also in the band Courage My Love (who are a bit more punk).  The three or four Softcult songs I heard were great.

I’ve seen Mannequin Pussy four times and their lives shows get better and better.  I assumed that if I went to this show I would arrive a few minutes after their set ended.

Movements is a fairly young emo band (which is why I hadn’t heard of them).  Here’s a review from The Soundboard that summarized the band for me:

Movement’s Feel Something felt like a moment that plenty of acts find difficult to capture. It was a debut album that presented them as a band capable of sitting on top of the world; you’d get emo communities gushing over Daylily nonstop, as just one highlight on an album that only seems to have appreciated in value over time. And then, when 2020’s No Good Left To Give came around, the chirping crickets could be heard for miles. It wasn’t even like that album was particularly bad, but it moved in directions in emo that mightn’t have sat as comfortably, and painted Movements as a band with different ambitions that being the newest prospective emo darlings.

So with that in mind, RUCKUS! appears to pitch all of that out of the window in favour of wild, flagrant course correction. What that course they’re trying to correct is, though, is a bit up in the air, as Movements flail through numerous new additions to their sonic catalogue in ways that can be difficult to parse. And yet, the seed of something is here. Movements’ high floor ensures that, and each scattered pinprick on the musical map has enough in its own right to yield something interesting. But if you’re insistent on bringing it all together…well, RUCKUS! is as messy as its name implies, even while managing to extract a bit of the fun from it in the abstract.

It’s probably worth addressing the issues first though, seeing as that’s what informs this album the most—as Movements’ attempt at breaking their ex-emo guise wide open to mine every possible corner of it, RUCKUS! doesn’t really work. Repeat listens don’t help either, in what takes the form of a loose-hanging, patchwork assemblage of pop and indie and post-hardcore, trying to meet in the middle in some way. A lot of individual components are added, but it’s hard to see how they culminate, or strengthen Movements’ catalogue as a whole. Heaven Sent is maybe the furthest outside of what’s workable, as a chiming synth tone sits on top of jangling, lounging guitars and Patrick Miranda’s most shrunken, saccharine vocals yet to coagulate as a cloying, lukewarm emo-pop love song.

Depending on when Death Grips ended, I might catch their set.  Although after reading this review, maybe I don’t want to catch their set after all.

Incidentally, Death Grips ended around 10:05.  I figure it would have taken me ten minutes to get out of there and to my car.  And then about fifteen more minutes to get over to the Fillmore, park, and get into the venue.  So 10:35.  Movements seemed to end around 11:15.   So I would have seen about 40 minutes.  Bah.