Live Review: Black Honey & Phoebe Green - St Luke's, Glasgow 07/10/2021
Dressed to impress in clashing colours, sounds and moves; Brighton-based Black Honey flaunted their cinematic grunge-rock set at Glasgow’s Saint Luke’s on Thursday night.
It still feels relatively weird thinking of standing in a room with hundreds of strangers singing and dancing to our favourite songs again - it’s a form of nostalgia you can’t quite explain until you find your feet sticking to floorboards between the immense bass line, as you swing a pint in one hand and lift the other overhead whilst subsequently losing your voice. Luckily, it is a blissful moment of chaos that Scotland’s Black Honey fans got to relive once again.
Yet another novelty of live music returning is finding new rising stars through support acts, which, in this case was the wonderful Phoebe Green. Her sound instantly proving to be hypnotic, bittersweet and raw with lyrics that utter no secrets especially in single Dreaming Of.
‘I wanted to feel like I was good, you make me feel like I'm alone, does it make you feel less insecure?’ her dreamy voice echoed feelings of young love, heartbreak and the notion of finding your feet in our modern society. Definitely down as one to watch, Phoebe Green’s glamorous bedroom-pop feels ever more exciting after a performance as impressive as that of Thursday night.
As the room settled back in to it’s mayhem, eyes suddenly fixated towards the strut of our headlining four piece who let the noise of Lizzo welcome them to stage. Lips now only moving to the shape of I Like The Way You Die, ‘treat me like I am a game, I’ll show how I like to play, I got a tattoo with your name’ sounds even better when backed by screaming fans.
Whilst some spent the night experiencing their first gig back, it quickly became clear that old habits never die as the Scottish crowd wasted no time in chanting our anthem of ‘here we, here we, here we fucking go!’ This warm welcome truly envisions the sign of a good show.
Bodies began to bounce in perfect unison as mosh pits dotted throughout until eventually, one large circle conjoined that of every small community within. It’s energy immeasurabley matching that of Black Honey - fun, loud and fiery. They really held the crowd under their spell with Izzy’s voice navigating every scream whilst Tommy’s bass, Chris’ guitar and Alex’s drumbeats continued to encourage every single pounding footstep.
And even as the band walked off post set-list, the crowd continue to dance, cheer and chant in to the eerie darkness of stage silence until lights suddenly flashed on as to signal the end of the show - which was rejected by yet another uproar. If that was your first show back then it was one for the books (or millenial gram.) And if it was one of many back, it left you nothing short of breathless, stunned and probably bruised.
Words and Photography by Alice Hadden