Ghostwoman at The Garage, London (Live Review)
- Published in Live
Ghostwoman
The Garage
Words & Pics by Captain Stavros
A gig so good it almost made the dead feel again. Discipline and decay in perfect harmony.
On a damp November night, the ghost of a long-dead librarian finds herself among the living at The Garage. She’s come not for joy, for she no longer feels such things, but to witness, and finds a duo so locked in step they could raise the dead; or silence them. Order, precision, and the slow pleasure of punishment fill the room as the living prove, once again, they’ve forgotten how to listen.
November is the cruelest of months, when the living still reek of Halloween sugar, cheap ale and bad decisions. The Garage heaved under their weight, swollen with bodies pressed together, and brains switched off. Some nights beg for silence. This one would be denied it.
Before the resurrection, Boy Wonder staggered onstage, a solo spectre from Toronto; his voice shredded like old parchment and soaked in lager, rasped raw from too many nights and too few beds. You could smell the tour on him: rust, petrol, and nicotine. There was something noble in it, like the last candle trying to light itself in a blackout. It suited the moment: a prelude to the discipline that would follow.
Then the house darkened. A hum of expectation, then precision, Ghostwoman took the stage. No fanfare, just the faint metallic scent of something about to break. Staccato notes shimmered through the gloom. They began with ‘WTTCW’ and ‘Alive’, the latter a title cutting a bit close for those doomed to haunt eternity. Evan Uschenko’s guitar snarled, each riff snapping like a whip; Ille van Dessel answered with a snare so clean it could slice open time itself. Each riff cut through the stale North London air like a librarian’s “shhh” amplified through a reverb pedal.
There is a shorthand between them that defies mortal language; nods, micro-expressions, the faintest shift of the shoulder, a pagan ritual in its own right. A dialogue in glances and gestures, like telepathy disguised as timing. The kind of understanding librarians dream of enforcing in reading rooms: unspoken, absolute. When Evan leaned into a bend, Ille caught it mid-air and drove it into the floor tom. When she twitched the hi-hat, he bent a note around it like wire. Precision and decay, locked in a waltz.
‘Jesus NC’, ‘5 Gold’, ‘Levon NC’; each number dragged the crowd deeper into the dirt, a baptism of noise and tension. Ille, maraca and drumstick in one hand, looked possessed by rhythm itself, the kind of elegance earned only through exhaustion. Every beat was a command, every roll a reprimand. Each track a spectral blur of desert twang and urban decay. Ille kept time like she was binding spells, hair haloed in purple light, face carved by rhythm and drumming with haunted grace. Those who dared speak over it deserved excommunication. When Evan struck, Ille responded instantly, every snare hit meeting a guitar’s collapse, every pause charged with threat. There was no excess, only control. Even the spaces between notes felt patrolled.
Evan’s patience thinned. Between songs he squinted toward the bar; the chatterers, the unrepentant. “You’re still talking, eh?” His tone didn’t rise, it curdled like a noise that refuses to be quieted, even by death. A Canadian politeness weaponised into threat. The living, of course, laughed. They always do before the lights flicker.
Still, Ghostwoman persevered; ‘Anhedonia’, ‘Do You’, ‘End of a Gun NC’, songs of motion, collapse, control. Each felt like steering a fishtailing car down an icy road, Death humming in the backseat. The guitar and drums were one body splitting itself in two, each limb rebelling yet perfectly synchronised. Ghostwoman played as someone who’s forgotten mercy. Evan’s tone was glass, sharp, cold, fatal. Together they carved a rhythm that punished distraction.
Perhaps as mockery or divine irony, came a partial cover of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ nearing the end of the set. The crowd, suddenly reverent, swayed as if they’d found God in someone else’s chords. The irony stung like ice. The drunkest among them adored it, unaware they were being measured for their own descent. By the end, ‘From Now On’ and ‘Yoko’ rang like final rites. No encore. None needed. The silence that followed was the truest sound of the night.
Ghostwoman do not play for joy. They play for discipline. For dread. For the exquisite moment where a room of the living forgets itself. They played like a system tightening around the listener. Every note a warning. Every silence a threat. Those who listened left marked. Those who talked will soon learn what it means to be haunted.
By Ms. Lydia Lament, Former Librarian, keeper of silence, deceased.
