[DID NOT ATTEND: June 22, 2026] Ratboys / Shallowater
I’ve seen Ratboys three times and have really enjoyed all of their live shows. I didn’t love this new album as much–it goes too deep into the country angle. And yet, I know that their live show is great. But I couldn’t make this show as I had a show the night before and the night after.
Interestingly, they are playing Jersey City in July as well as a small festival in Philly (but I’m not going to that one).
Shallowater is an interesting band. I listened to the first song on their album and it was slow and somehow slower. I was absolutely going to turn it off, but I didn’t and then midsong it got hugely loud and distorted. Evidently this genre is called slowcore? They describe their sound as West Texas dirtgaze. So this first song starts out really slow (like Low) and I did like that it was a full sound, not a bedroom low fi sound. It picked up about 90 seconds in and then after two and a half minutes they all jump on the distortion pedals and the song turns into chaos with a noisy distorted guitar solo for about a minute and then it all drops off again into the quiet acoustic sound once more. I’m definitely intrigued, especially since I hated them when they started–sometimes you have to listen all the way to the end of a song.
The other songs on thei album run to 7 and 8 minutes long. I may need to dive into them a bit more. I’m quite fascinated.
I would like to get back to The Arrow again, as it was a nice venue. But this show wasn’t the one.
I Just Read About That... 