Live Review: Sœur - Thousand Island, London 16/11/2018
Ahead of the release of their new EP last weekend, Soeur brought their raucous grunge sound to the intimate venue of Thousand Island, in Highbury and Islington.
It’s not often that you walk into a music venue with the purpose of listening to some hard-hitting rock music, and the room is a beautiful shade of pastel pink. This held a really lovely symmetry to the band that everybody had come here, to see. At first glance, Soeur is made up of two petite blonde women and a man with a kind face. Without doing any research, you’d think that this was just another indie band. How delightful it is when they prove you wrong! Whilst their songs are laden with intricate, melodic guitar riffs, it is the thrashing drums and the shredding of guitars that catch you out.
Soeur opened the set by asking if the crowd “wanna come closer; this is gonna be an intimate one” and went straight into the two singles that they released last year, Left Living and No Fire. The former songs seemed like they were trialling the crowd to see how responsive they would be, and in the latter, they spilt attitude all over the stage in the form of headbanging and back bends. Soeur have that true artistic quality where they sound almost exactly like recordings, when playing live. Halfway through the set, they darkened the mood with their heavily grunge-inspired song Put You On, which had all of the thick moodiness that comes through in the studio version.
After playing their older songs, the focus came onto the songs from their newest EP. Whole Me, being my favourite song on the EP, was as magical and emotionally charged live, as I was expecting it to be. Tina’s vocal clarity in her higher range really stood up to Anya’s melancholic mid-range. Their harmonies during Out Again was especially dizzying and Slow Days was a comforting respite to the power that two guitars and powerful guitars, can produce. The only downside to Soeur’s performance, was that it was no-where near long enough – which is also a good fault to find! They closed the set with the emotional and angsty single, Fight, which was probably more powerful than I thought it could be and the onslaught of headbanging from most people in the room, showed that they also felt to power of Soeur, as well.
Words by Tyler Damara Kelly