[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]H[/dropcap]ow can such a beautiful looking person make such an incredible noise?
I just stepped into a favourite horror movie (okay I admit it, Audition this is not) and I am thankfully – thanks Alan – not alone to experience the pleasure. Enter Skye Sweetnam (aka: Sever).
(Suggested precis: Satan’s pooches haven’t been fed for, well, eternity I guess. Unleashed, they tear frenziedly after Russ Meyer, while he can only dream that a pussycat would indeed step right in NOW to kill kill. With a swash of Guantanamo orange, if you please.)
“Hey, Russ, Russ! Pussycat. Chill, chill! Sever’s here. It’s all gonna be fine.”
My last visit to the Underwear – sorry, Underworld – two years ago was to witness the mighty Fishbone and the irrepressible Angelo Moore surfing their stuff. Little did I know that I’d be about to experience something arguably even more euphoric.
With effortless seductive and irresistible flair Sever seizes the room by its sweaty locks and exhorts these gathered to PARTY. The venue is now one Sever-core bouncy castle: moshfully ecstatic where once it was flaccid. About five songs in and I’m feeling e.m.o.t.i.o.n.a.l. (I have made out ‘Fuel My Fire’ and ‘Crowd Control’ up to this point.) Lit by incandescent candles her voice throws kerosene cocktails onto a mattress of teenage sexual fumblings, and we can only marvel at how well it glows and how filthy it sounds.
This… is a hail of dump-trucks landing on Donald Trump’s smug bulbous orange mug (I’ve come dressed in Orwellian boots); is dueling swordfish in a tetrodotoxic sea (and the heart stops a little); is a ‘puff pass’ in the long grass (and the heart races a little, narrowly avoiding Russ and the pooches); is snapping at my heels! (A happy foot is a happy person after all.)
And I am happy. Delirious in fact. This is what love feels like and I don’t want it to ever go away. (I catch Skye at the merch stand very briefly, I wasn’t expecting to, and hold her hand, very briefly – I wanted to kiss it. It REALLY was that kind of night).
What Sumo Cyco achieved here is no mean feat, and in so doing have dared the equally mighty Butcher Babies to raise their game, and they do not disappoint either. Where Sever had laid the scene, Heidi Shepherd marshalling her flock, played it like a maestro. (“Can’t stop moving” – Monster’s Ball).
Oh, and when I speak of love, it really is. How? Well, during the denouement of the Butcher Babies’ set, stage front, Heidi leans into the audience and embraces Alan. That was special. Very special. It was that kind of night.
Photos: Carl Byron Batson. Not to be reproduced without express prior permission.
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Boho skeleton and full time professional clownfish who understands the fine line between nuance and nuisance. After a lifetime of playing guitar and writing, he ought to.
