[DID NOT ATTEND: October 7, 2026] Slift / Rhododendron
Perhaps one of the worst things that could have happened to my concert going landscape was to discover Le Poisson Rouge, and amazing small club in NYC that gets the best bands all the time. I’ve been twice. Once to see Kathleen Edwards who I thought was never going to tour again and once to go to a Phish after-party after a show at MSG.
LPR is a massive pain in the ass to get to for me and there’s no reason I should ever see who is playing there. But in this case I found out from the band Slift that their only area show was going to be there.
I have been obsessed with Slift since the pandemic when I saw their incredible Levitation Session video. Since that video, they have come to the East Coast three times–twice in Brooklyn and now at LPR. I thought about going to this show so much. I even had tickets to something else that night but I still thought about going. When I decided not to go to the show that I had tickets to, I seriously considered going, but oh, what a pain it would have been.
And what do they sound like? Well, from LPR’s page:
Guitarist Jean Fossat and bassist Rémi Fossat are related. They’ve been friends with drummer Canek Flores since high school, and 2026 marks a decade together in this trio. In the technical sense, every previous album by the radiant and heavy French trio SLIFT has been a fantasia—a composite of genres and forms that allowed the band to improvise, to jam on themes until they seemed to spiral together into space. Their acclaimed third album, 2024’s Ilion, was a sci-fi story built with 10- to 13-minute exploratory escapades, often starting with doom metal or stoner rock before spinning freely into glorious instrumental oblivion.
It’s possible that their live show could never compare to the amazingness of that video. And they have apparently no following here. So they would have to play a teeny place in Philly. But damn if they could get to Union Transfer, it would be incredible.
Rhododendron were supposed to open for Voivod in a few days, but that tour was cancelled because of someone getting sick. So in theory I could have seen them twice in a few days. But now I won’t see them at all.
Formed in 2019 in Portland, Oregon while the band’s members were still in high school, Rhododendron’s Ezra Chong (guitar, vocals), Gage Walker (bass), and Noah Mortola (drums) set out to push their musical limits without regard for genre boundaries or audience expectation. In the past 7 years the trio has developed a sound rooted in technical precision and repetition. Drawing from the angular experimentation of underground rock in the 1980s and 1990s alongside elements of jazz, ambient, and progressive music, their compositions are deliberate with intensity. Riffs fracture and reform, rhythms lock into patterns only to break apart, and extended passages build pressure before shifting direction.
They sound pretty great too.
I’m not sure if it would have been worth the immense hassle to go to this show. But maybe it would have been.
