ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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Queen Adreena
LIVE AT THE ICA ONE LITTLE INDIAN 19.09.05 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk I’ve seen Queen Adreena live a couple of times and it’s a scary experience. Skinny little Katie Jane Garside exudes little girl lost noises alongside menacing vibes. A waif-like figure, sometimes twisting like a scrumpled piece of paper, sometimes an in-you-face riot gurrl. Leg cocked on the monitor or blowing away in a breeze. Backed up by pounding pounding pounding drums from Pete Howard and thrumming bass from Melanie Ann Garside, sheets of sound pour over the top, courtesy of Crispin Gray. An hour in their company is the archetypal cathartic art-rock experience – simultaneously a long time and no time at all. Favourites are played (Pull Me Under, Medecine Jar, Fuck Me Doll, Pretty Like Drugs and they astonishing Suck), along with songs that blend into a soundscape of fear. And that’s exactly what this album is like. An authentic document of a gig, minus the stink, sights and sticky carpets. But you know how to recreate that in your house, don’t you? Somehow appropriate that the ICA should host this gig, hosting, as it did, the inaugural show of those wreckers of civilisation, Throbbing Gristle, a mere 29 years ago. The subject matter of Katie Jane Garside’s lyrical obsessions is no more salubrious and I’ll leave that to your investigation. www.queenadreena.com |