Live Review: Being Dead - Moth Club, London 27/02/2025
Being Dead delight Moth Club with their psychedelic jams.
Supporting Being Dead tonight, Honk’s rockabilly Black Keys esque blues rock has a country feel with a jaunty edge that creates a scintillating sound that pleases the enthused crowd at the East London gem Moth Club.
Making way for Being Dead, the gregarious psych rockers announce amusingly and with a typical out there vibe: “We’re here mothership. We are professionals”. Juli Keller the lead singer teases in an her American drawl “Alright we’ll play some sooooongs”, before pausing and joking “Are you saying we don’t have to?” Their oddball off the off the cuff humour is a hit with the hipster fraternity out in full force tonight. She jokes about guitarist Cody “He got frosted tips, he wanted to look like Cali but… shit still stinks” which is met with a huge wave of laughter.
From the get go their sound is eccentric, with bouts of calm guitars suddenly breaking into ethereal vocals. The effect is truly mesmerising as drums kick in resoundingly to add another layer of delicious noise to their truly unique blend of psych rock. There’s an infectious chemistry between the band as they exchange tongue in cheek banter from the off while guitars gallop as they get into gear on their first song. Their weirdness feels apt in this quirky intimate venue full of charm and soaked in character. Ante is upped on their second song ‘Muriel’s Big Day Off’ in dramatic fashion with a dirty sounding guitar and almost tribal drumming.
A sudden segway followed by a drastic tempo change and harmonious “Oooooing” vocals has an upbeat, energetic energy that flows through the room effortlessly. Randomly Juli exclaims: “Country hearts country loving big hearts always giving! Isn’t the country England? The country is England right?!”, sounding like a stream of conciseness tangent inspired by an acid trip. As they swig a bottle of white wine onstage between them, they call it a “A big bottle of power juice! They were not supportive of it when we played in Paris. They thought it was trashy and we were like if you don’t like it you can leaaaaaaave!” which had the giddy crowd in stitches between songs.
The lyrical imagery of ‘Heaven’s got a password, heaven needs a home’ shows a slightly more serious side to their bravado and truly highlights their wonderful way with words. Bigging up their main support, they announce: “Honk is the bonk there’s no way around it!” by way of thank you for their support. Their set is dreamy and disorientating yet delivered with a calm confidence and it’s hard to take your eyes off them. Out of nowhere they get the chant going mid song “Hey goofball, guns down!”, which the crowd get keenly involved in as they afterwords observe: “Ok, the momentum is still there!”.
The Black lips sounding snarling punk edged vocals on their recent single ‘Van Goes’ mid way through the set is a real highlight, as the lead jokes: “I’ve never asked for less reverb in my wedge but there we go!”.
The weird sound effects sound like a plane crash in a nightmare but then burst into jangly guitar as if waking up in a dream, which is probably the best way to describe their latest album ‘EELS’. They joke towards the end of the set: “We’ve got two more for you, we’re going to workshop it, we’re still figuring it out live!”, before playing ‘Goodnight’ from the same album, adding: “Ok we have more song, sorry we can only play one more song. We have another set but it’s not tonight, it’s tomorrow” which has the crowd howling and chanting “one more set”, they joke “Imagine if a band played the same songs over and over again til the encore. Limp Bizkit opened and closed with Break Stuff. How genius is that!” epitomising the band’s eccentricity perfectly tonight in a show full of wonderful madness.
Words by Brendan Sharp
