Monday Night Meltdown

The Grace

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Dork Magazine x Footsteps x M for Montreal x Mothland bring the heat

There are countless theories about spontaneous combustion and, as a child, I was deeply invested in every single one. Scientifically speaking, it’s what happens when heat can’t escape anymore; pressure builds, matter ruptures, something ignites. Oily rags. Friction. Damp organic material packed too tightly together. A room with no ventilation and too many bodies moving at once.

Sounds a bit like any gig worth its salt, really.

Monday night at The Grace had all the right conditions. M for Montreal x Footsteps x Mothland x Dork Magazine — essentially the cultural equivalent of throwing aerosol cans into a microwave — somehow still had enough fuel left after The Great Escape for one last detonation.

And ignite they absolutely did.

Mothland once again left the back door open for us and we slunk our way inside just as Boutique Feelings had started spilling onto the stage. A six-piece from Montreal crammed onto a platform built for maybe four people maximum, already threatening structural integrity before the first chorus properly landed.

We’d caught them the day before at The Old Blue Last, so we knew broadly what was coming. That still didn’t prepare us.

Karim Lakhdar moves with the same twitchy conviction as a young Zack de la Rocha — all kinetic urgency and barely-contained fury — but without feeling derivative for a second. Between cuts like ‘Long Sure’ and ‘If You Were Me’, the band swing violently between wiry post-punk, freeform jazz eruptions and politically-charged art rock. Before the second track properly kicks in, Lakhdar deadpans: “We don’t think it’s normal to scroll past a kitten, a war and a plate of pasta in less than a minute,” which earns the kind of uncomfortable laugh that only lands because everyone knows he’s right.

Lines like, “It’s when they start to take it all that you begin to fucking care,” hit especially hard against the backdrop of the current global mess. You don’t really watch Boutique Feelings so much as get swept into their frequency whether you intended to or not.

Flautist Vanessa Ascher, shoulder-to-shoulder with Lakhdar throughout, weaponises her instrument entirely. At points it sounds less like a flute and more like suppressive fire aimed directly at the patriarchy.

Then, suddenly, it’s over. The set closes with a surprisingly gentle, “Come chat with us by the merch table,” as though the previous forty minutes hadn’t felt like being trapped inside a politically conscious pressure cooker. We lean against the wall trying to catch our breath.

Needing a moment to cool off, we find a nook near the decks where a familiar face is soundtracking the downtime with Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’. Track after track, banger after banger, the room somehow keeps moving between sets instead of collapsing in on itself.

Only later, while scrolling through tagged photos after the gig, do we realise the DJ was none other than Nuha Ruby Ra, who we’d caught tearing apart The MOTH not too long ago. Had we clocked it at the time we probably would’ve gone completely tongue-tied, but instead she was warm, approachable and effortlessly cool in the way genuinely talented people often are. Given the moves she’s making over the next few months, it’s safe to say she’s one to keep both eyes on.

Then came Annie-Claude Deschênes.

Helping launch Quebec Spring’s M for Montreal clearly wasn’t enough excitement for one lifetime because she emerged onto stage like Leatherface armed not with a chainsaw but a microphone, immediately holding the entire room hostage. Backed by Boutique Feelings drummer Anthony Piazza — operating a cycloptic wrist-mounted spotlight camera that projected warped live footage behind them like some cursed voyeuristic surveillance reel — the whole set felt genuinely nightmarish in the best possible way.

Tracks like ‘Menace Minimale’ and ‘Les Manières De Table’ slithered around the venue with this grotesque electro-punk swagger; all chrome, sweat and predatory tension. It dripped from the ceiling like condensation in a slaughterhouse.

Another absurdly strong set.

Later in the evening we caught Annie outside the venue and, much like earlier encounters throughout the night, she was disarmingly easy to talk to. In the space of five minutes we somehow ended up discussing everything from being managed by Desire, to getting approached by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for touring — influences you can absolutely trace through both her sound and stage presence. We passed along a cryptic message to a mutual acquaintance back in Montreal, both immediately cackling like cartoon villains before disappearing back into the night.

Tiny world.

Time folds strangely at gigs like this, but somewhere in the blur we spot the long, slender silhouette of Ellis-D standing beneath the glow of a running-man exit sign. We gush a bit about the set we’d caught at 100 Club and the mythical aura surrounding it. Demure as ever, he brushes it off with a shy, “Oh gosh, that feels so long ago.”

Naturally, all that humility evaporates the second he hits the stage.

Ellis-D spends most of the set climbing over PAs, launching himself into the crowd and generally treating personal safety as an optional extra. By the time closer ‘Drifter’ stretches into its sprawling finale, the room feels one bassline away from total collapse.

And then Lemonsuckr arrive to finish the job.

A completely new band to us, though judging by the amount of merch already in the crowd, absolutely not to anyone else there.

Dressed like sleazy sixth-formers from some lost 1982 public access broadcast — leather jackets, shirts, ties, already drenched in sweat before the first song properly lands — they treat the stage less like a performance space and more like a vague suggestion. Cables whip through the audience. Microphones migrate into impossible places. People get tangled together like human extension leads.

It’s total chaos.

An intensely British, deeply unwell version of Kraftwerk.

By the time they tear through ‘Dead Disco’, ‘Instant Kinks’, ‘H.E.A.T.’ and new single ‘Stain’, it feels like they’ve absorbed residual energy from every set before them and completely overloaded. There’s something impossible to pin down about Lemonsuckr; grimy but magnetic, detached but euphoric, like finding a rave flyer in a puddle and deciding to follow it anyway.

After the set we end up outside with the Mothland crew and the band themselves, attempting to convince them that Montreal needs to import whatever the hell this is immediately. Negotiations continue over post-loadout kebabs before the reality of it being a Monday night finally catches up with everyone.

Somehow, after an entire festival weekend, every band still turned up ready to empty the tank completely. By the end of the night, The Grace didn’t feel like a venue anymore so much as the smouldering remains of a very controlled accident.

Days later, the smoke still hasn’t cleared but we’re happy to report that we’ve not gone up in flame, yet.

 

From Water Slides to Stage Dives: Rockaway Beach, Bognor Regis 

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

 

A three-day buffet of brilliance, bafflement, and battered ear defenders

As the minions shuffled back to work, trudging through poor weather and poorer New Year’s resolutions, “New Year, New Me” was left starving back at the gaff, living off the good intentions of its hosts. Dry weather. Dry January. Dry skin. Dry water-cooler chat.

Yours truly, newly freed from the constraints of gainful employment, had other opportunities in store courtesy of life. Click-clacking along the tracks toward Bognor Regis, thinly veiled snow banks slid past the window. One couldn’t help but squint skyward at the boundless azure above, bathed in golden rays, and think: suckers.

If you too carried over some holidays, are free of financial burdens (kids, mortgages), or are simply gainfully unemployed — this could be you. We were en route to that strange kids-turned-adult theme park, Butlin's, for one of their signature Big Weekenders: Rockaway Beach. Once in its infancy, Rockaway is now a pre-teen in its 11th year. Three days. A buffet of legendary and emerging artists. Direct competition with the Butlins breakfast and dinner buffet. Only one would remain.

 

Day 1

 

The sun sinks, the moon rises — impossibly large, already asserting dominance. We drown our fish and chips in ladle after ladle of molten nacho cheese sauce, earning serious side-eye while giving the mushy peas a wide berth. A colonial culinary masterpiece, in our opinion. Fusion cuisine, eat your heart out — though it would likely be our hearts eaten from the inside out by cholesterol.

The calories were directly proportional to the amount of artists we needed to absorb: seven. Of those, three stood out.

Prima Queen

A two-piece with a travelling drummer, having a lot of fun when most of us are still hungover beneath a new moon in a new year. Louise and Kristin engage with each other more than the audience, which we appreciated — many of us were still reckoning with earlier food choices that felt sensible at the time.

They play and sing about what they know: their experiences. Tracks like ‘Ugly’ and ‘Chew My Cheeks’ explore unbalanced relationships across TFL routes and festival circuits alike — gig spaces and limelight blur together. Lyrically you’d expect morose Morrissey, but visually it’s back-to-back solos, skipping across the stage, and three tambourines (one per member). Kristin can’t wait to hit the water slide tomorrow; Louise later attempts to court a royal with her eyes over on the Skyline stage.

The speakers crackle throughout — more a sound engineer issue than theirs — but between that and the pop-leaning tones, they struggle to fully grab the room. They close with ‘The Prize’, a slick hook that pulls everyone back in. Heads bob. Clapping happens unprompted. Kristin introduces it:

“This one’s named after our friends — because sometimes the world makes us forget they’re the prize.”

True say. The next afternoon we spend hours in the water park and, to our regret, never cross paths with them to say we enjoyed the set — or challenge them to a slide race.

 

ElliS·D

After a few performances, we were flagging. The cold crept in. Darkness settled. Circadian rhythms lay in ruins. Enter ElliS·D — the shot in the arm we desperately needed.

Standing in for Stealing Sheep, this albino James Brown (energy-wise and touring-wise) blasted off, taking several layers of epidermis of those fans closest to the stage, with him.

“If anyone was expecting Stealing Sheep,” Ellis grins, “you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. This one’s called ‘Humdrum’.”

No one was disappointed.

Easily the best-sounding and most vital act of the day. Timing locked. Sound pristine. Fake-out endings worthy of Houdini himself. Everyone on stage firing. Ellis moves like Stretch Armstrong, invading every inch of the stage — and several beyond it.

Near the end, there’s an audible electrical explosion offstage. The equipment simply cannot handle the truth (said in Jack Nicholson). A guy behind us, as blown away as the AV rig, mutters reverently to no one in particular: “That’s really cool.” We clock it.

“This is our last song,” Ellis says. “If you want more… it’s really fucking long. It’s called ‘Drifting’.”

No joke. We’re repeatedly faked out and repeatedly scolded for premature clapping. One to watch. Playing the 100 Club at the end of January — we’ll be there, and you should too.

 

Mandrake Handshake

Promise from the off: a tambourine, a muahahahaaa, a warm-up stretch before the sprint. Eight multi-instrumentalists on stage, and genuine skill in how they avoid stepping on each other. Feels like art-school kids who started a band as a joke and accidentally got good. Loose, jammy, shameless fun. Like a psychedelic porno soundtrack.

And then… the vocals.

Non-lexical wails that work briefly — like catching a radio signal in a tunnel — but quickly wear thin. Between songs, the vocalist speaks perfectly clearly, which only deepens the confusion. The new material itself is excellent, but the vocals blow everything else out: flat, loud, wildly out of tune. As an older gentleman strolls past yawning wide while the guitarist rattles off a wookie call, the timing is impeccable, wish the same could be said of the set’s vocals.

We leave early.

 

Day 2

Pastels bleed through the curtains overlooking a car park. They’re peeled back to reveal a bright full moon — easily mistaken for the sun. Spellbinding. Confused, hungry, emaciated, we drift toward a gluttonous breakfast. Coffees. Waffles. Fortified, we waddle back to the hotel.

Halfway to our floor, the lift begins to shake violently. The hand of God slaps us. This is it, we think. Cut down in our prime in a Butlins lift. Our eyes land on a framed flyer: “Download our app, today!” Beneath it, simply: “Splash.”

Life’s too short. Let’s get wet.

We skip gigs for the first quarter of the day and head to the tallest structure on site: the water park. Child-free chaos under adult supervision. Zero queues. Slide races. Minor musculoskeletal damage. We quit while ahead (feet first, kids). Pints on the seafront. Salt mist in our nostrils. Sun still high. Darkness beckons.

First stop: Winter Garden.

 

Winter Garden

No skimping on guitar delay. Bass and drums crisp. Vocals? Less so. Harmonies fail to align. Most tracks follow a rinse-and-wash formula: build, crescendo, fade. Where do they sit? Gothic? Math-rock? Shoegaze? If The XX are for sad boys, Winter Garden might be for sad girls.

One redeeming feature: the guitarist appears to be listening to an entirely different band. High kicks. Gesticulations. Complete mismatch — and therefore, accidentally entertaining.

Directionless. Self-indulgent. Chef’s kiss for spectacle, not substance.

 

We Hate You, Please Die

Flagging before 9pm — dangerous territory. Then France launches an ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Music). Direct hit.

Guitars stab, stab, stab. Cymbals rain like hail on tin. Vocals stomp straight through ear protection. Scratchy. Punky. Perfect. France has given us wine, romance, and Descartes — but these three channel the spirit of farmers dumping shit on parliament. We’re all in.

Great hooks. Sharp turns. We promise to die if you’ll play at our wake.

 

Gans

A band that sounds as dirty as it… well, sounds. This filthy duo drags punters to the stage — the fullest Centre Stage’s been since WHYPD. Electro-pop trash bathed in strobes, shadows, and melting computer noise.

The problem? They abandon what they’re good at — the tunes — in favour of audience engagement that simply doesn’t land. Stage diving at an audience without the upper-body strength to support their ambition.

“Put your hands up like it’s 1999 Mother Fuckers!” they shout at a middle-aged crowd who don’t know who they are.

They sound like what Slaves became, or DFA 1979 held underwater too long at Splash. Washed out.

 

Walt Disco

Rolled in like the tide — smooth, quick, and left us a bit wet. From sweat, you perverts.

Buttery vocals. Symphonic. Nuanced operatics many attempted this weekend and failed (we’re looking at you, Mandrake Handshake). Think Hercules & Love Affair with an ’80s Bowie affectation. Polished. Rehearsed. Smooth as silk.

Online presence doesn’t quite match what we’re seeing — this feels more Radio 6 than a Channel 4’s production playlist — but it works. All new songs, no titles yet. Frontman James Potter abandons his guitar and prowls the stage with a roving mic. No one’s safe. Everyone looks delighted.

Keep an eye on Glasgow.

 

Insecure Men

The most outrageous act of the weekend — and recent memory.

Saul Adamczewski (Fat White Family) strolls onstage smoking a fag, giving fire safety and social contracts the finger. Bold. Insecure. Same thing.

They open a late starting set with ‘Cleaning Bricks’, a honky-tonk western oddity that hooks instantly. Seven musicians. Four keyboards. Someone yells, “Where’s the fourth bass player?” — we laugh and note down the anecdote, thanks for the insightful chuckle random dude. 

People flood the space mid-song. Hype spreads faster than Marky. Track two, ‘Cliff Has Left the Building’, slinks along beautifully. Slide guitar holding it together. The most replayable band all weekend. Music for any occasion.

“This one’s miserable,” Saul warns — but technical issues derail it, and instead we get ‘Crab’. Miserable enough. Lyrics like “Let’s make things harder” and “I want to peel off the back of your eye” delivered sickly sweet.

They finish abruptly 20 minutes early and simply… leave. The DJ panics, looks to the sound booth for an answer, and just flicks on the decks dropping The Runaways’ ‘Cherry Bomb’ on us. Landing bungled. Set? Superb.

 

Day 3

The Members

 

A try-too-hard mess riddled with tech issues. Feedback. Crackles. Unplugged guitars from stepped on cords, repeatedly. Out-of-sync chaos.

“What’s more punk than this?” Marky asks.

My gut screams no. We leave after two songs.

 

English Teacher

 

Studio 365 is cavernous. Gloomy, upbeat souls gather. The chatter dies instantly when English Teacher take the stage — the only time a class ever shuts up for a teacher.

Hooks collide from different seasons — winter meets summer — and somehow it works. No instrument oversteps. Everyone races together toward the finish line sticking out a different note to break the tape. New track ‘Shark’ meanders a bit, but the energy is undeniable.

This is music that would feel cramped and apologetic in a low-ceiling pub. Tonight, with space to breathe, it’s precision without waste. Effortless on the surface. Paddling furiously beneath.

They end debating whether sharks are fish or mammals — like a Reddit thread come to life.

 

And so it ends.

A seaside escape. Highs and lows like the tide. Rockaway Beach, 11 years deep, shows no signs of slowing. One final bottle of Prosecco at The Spoons as sunlight splashes and crawls across our faces, we sit comparing notes. Agreements, disagreements, what is prog-rock even and why does Marky actually hate it as much as he does? [I'm an old school punk, dude; hating prog is in our manifesto - Marky, Ed.] Zero conclusions made, zero water dispensed in the train’s lavatory after healthily lathering up our mitts in suds.

No arguments about how it felt, slippery and awkward, at times but, we’d do it all again. Well, not the part about the train’s toilet.