As everyone knows, when Brighton’s summer comes around, it’s no longer about warm weekend evenings, in fact drinking becomes an every evening occurrence. Bodies bustle down Queen’s Road from the train station. As two ladies approach me and my friend, snatching a lighter straight out of our hands, they blurt out: “So where are you going tonight?” As we reply timidly, you get the sense they wish they never asked as they hurl the lighter back at us and bid us good night. It seems Solids are not on everyone’s must-see for a warm Wednesday in June. It seems to be their loss though.

Montreal’s Solids have expanded since their previous release in 2014, Blame Confusion. As if their previous incarnation was not loud enough, the addition of an extra guitarist has found their decibel vein grow deeper and more sincere. Where as, quite often, bands from abroad can suffer with a serious bout of arrogance, where Solids really find their charm is within their exceptionally modest and humble approach. Something that by far and large contrasts their explosive sound that yells much louder than anything else.

Support on the night found root in Lead Sister and Art Is Hard Records’ Birdskulls. Birdskulls have leapt around the UK in recent days with Solids and it seems their formidable relationship with the group has expanded from “fish and chip, to friendship” as they declare onstage tonight. Their set tonight, although delivered largely to a fairly timid room, found root in the plethora of sounds that are omitted under the wash of phased guitar. It carried with it a force and found comfort in The Hope and Ruin which did a good job of containing it rather than letting it trickle out. Birdskulls are quickly climbing up that nation’s roster of acts, something that is evident in the way their presence onstage seems to be growing.

As three skinny blokes approach the stage slightly later than expected, you couldn’t help but feel quietly curious as to what they are all about. On record, their sound is abrasive but similarly, frontman Xavier Germain Poitras’ voice finds delicacy in its vulnerable murmur; not a million miles from the likes of Yuck, yet the ferocity of the noise tends to dominate the music. Nevertheless, as they approach the stage with caution, it seems you can drag all the necessary metaphors to describe what was to proceed but for the sake of argument, let’s just stick to ‘calm before the storm’. What omits from the now three-piece is a wall of noise like nothing before, visibly knocking everyone slightly further back from the stage.

As they hurled into one of their newer additions, ‘Shine’, the dribbling drum section that opens the song acts as the alluring intro, compelling in its fluidity that then leaves the guitar to fill the voids in the slightly empty room.

Nothing is left unsaid as Poitras hurls his muttered vocals down the microphone. Although the sound was certainly immediate, it often drowned out all other aspects of the music: drums and vocals were lost within a prism of distortion that was completely inescapable. When listened to closely though, there was something exceptionally therapeutic in the way that Poitras’ vocals hung on such a delicate tangent and how this contradicted the brutal nature of the music that finds comparisons to the sound of A Place To Bury Strangers.

From the opener, the band took a step back into an old single, ‘Traces’, which finds much more rhythm to its attack. Guitars swoon over the top in a quasi-shoegaze method whilst Poitras’ voice finds itself a little more at home with a yell rather than a murmur. As they stop to greet the crowd, you can’t help but feel a little warmed by the sheer friendliness of Solids’ personality. It’s exceptionally refreshing to have a band that level themselves perfectly with the audience, never straying to the calls of arrogance. Due to this fact, when strings snapped and the band paused to have a brief interaction with the crowd, nobody became frustrated or tense that they were missing out, it more became a casual chat with drummer, Louis Guillemette.

From here on in, the band circled through old slices such as ‘Off White’ and ‘Laisser Faire’, both featuring on Blame Confusion with the latter outlining the fact that the group can find tenderness between the explosive distortion. As the group end on ‘Cold Hands’, it seems that they have found true sincerity in their sound, regardless of the various blips that occurred throughout the set. The fact that they approached the situation with such humbleness and grace, thanking the audience at every opportunity, left for quite an intimate performance. If you came for quantity of songs, you may have left slightly disappointed after just five tracks, nevertheless, nobody seemed too bothered.

It felt less like a gig and more like you had been exclusively invited into the front room of Solids’ house to witness a private show. They left the stage feeling obscurely more like friends than anything else.
Tom Churchill

Website: solids.bandcamp.com
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