By his own admission, Olli Appleyard is tired. “I fucked myself up this weekend,” he says – the result of their triumphant appearances at Reading and Leeds, the latter on home turf, less than 48 hours before tonight’s sold-out show. Both appearances are rights of passage for Static Dress, who are touring their self-released album Rogue Carpet Disaster and proving themselves as post-hardcore stars of tomorrow.
Opener Fleahouse sets the tone: two seconds in and the moshpit has already opened. The crowd’s energy seems to be restorative for Appleyard, who asks the crowd to help him sing, something the punters are only too happy to do. Time and again it’s the community surrounding Static Dress who really make the gig a success. Tracks such as fan favourite Sweet become karaoke moments, and the steady stream of crowd surfers and stage divers points towards a confidence and sense of safety that the band inspires in its fans.
The problem Static Dress have tonight is one of momentum. Their ambitious world-building approach to recorded music sadly doesn’t always work live. A voiceover plays every two to three songs, unfurling some sort of narrative, but the voice is so distorted it’s impossible to follow along. And every time another one starts, the lights go down, fans start chatting and the magic is momentarily lost. Towards the end of the set, a dancer randomly appears on stage, covered in blood, to flail along to an instrumental for two minutes and then disappear again. There’s a lot of ambitious storytelling that lacks a common denominator to bring it all together.
It’s telling that when the band leave before their encore, no one recognises that it’s time to cheer them back on because they’ve left and come back multiple times already. Still, the joyful carnage starts up again as soon as they reappear. Tighten up the tech, lose at least a bit of the meta narrative and they’ll be dominating far bigger stages than this one before long.
