Perfect Pussy, the noise/punk/rock band from Syracuse on the Captured Tracks label, headlined Hang Fire on Saturday night.
Meredith Graves pretty much owned the stage:
But more on Perfect Pussy in a bit.
The show started with Wet Socks, an unannounced opener. The duo of Hunter Jayne on guitar and vocals and John Zimmerman on drums just gets tighter and tighter, faster and faster. Wet Socks’ garage rock works in combination with almost any other sort of rock, and the band seems equally at ease warming up the crowd with an early set or finishing the night with a dance party.
Hang Fire now has at least one light in front of the stage, but Wet Socks didn’t have it on:
Next up on Saturday night: Tonto. Tonto is undoubtedly one of Savannah’s best rock bands, but the trio doesn’t play all that much — mainly because they’re busy playing for other projects. Anders Thomsen (guitarist for Damon and the Shitkickers) is the lead singer and guitarist; Corey Barhorst (organ player in Niche and former Kylesa bassist) is on bass; Lee Vallier (of Bear Fight! and other acts) is on drums.
Tonto was playing their first gig at Hang Fire, and the band clearly relished the small stage and the fans right next to the stage.
Crazy Bag Lady has been performing high-energy shows around town for a while now, but I had not seen them till Saturday. It was a short, sharp, aggressive set that kept things at a fever pitch.
The fivesome of Perfect Pussy had a little trouble squeezing onto the Hang Fire stage, but probably even large stages can seem too small for them. Graves stood on one of the monitors to start the set — it was a majestic moment of gathering the crowd’s attention before letting loose, before unleashing a wall of sound.
There definitely could have been more vocals in the mix and the set could have been longer too, but it’s easy to see why there is so much buzz right now about Perfect Pussy. Graves is charismatic and beautiful and the rest of the band clearly has the talent to ride this thing wherever it might go.
Since Graves was mainly in a sort of ambient red light, I thought most of the pics worked better in black and white:
