Concert Review: Slowdive and Drab Majesty

By Lillian Jones

Music Director 

This past Mother’s Day I was given the opportunity to experience Slowdive, one of the mother figures of shoegaze, live. Upon receiving confirmation that I would be attending this concert; I was buzzing with nervous energy up until my arrival at the Moody Center in downtown Austin. 

Once inside the venue, I found my footing in the crowd to watch the last three songs of the opener, Drab Majesty. I had never heard of the quirky duo before, but they transformed the indoor venue into an otherworldly synthpop party. The two members perform as their alter egos, Deb Demure and Mona D, dawning pale makeup, bleach blonde wigs, sunglasses as well as a formal suit and tie. 

As I had only gotten to see a very short amount of their set, I was left itching for more. The band mixes synthwave and goth styles of music that I loved. Notably, they have a song featured on the amazing soundtrack of the new A24 film, I Saw The TV Glow. If you’re a fan of bands such as New Order, Clan of Xymox or Mareux, I highly suggest giving them a listen. 

In between the sets, the nerves I previously had during the day began to come back as I stood alone in the crowd. To pass the time I began searching for ways to move closer to the stage in preparation for what was to come. After about 30 minutes, the lights dimmed extremely low as the five band members emerged from backstage and the crowd erupted in cheers. 

The set began with the song, “shanty”, off  their newest album, everything is alive, released in 2023. This album has gotten some mixed opinions as it’s a more modern take on the shoegaze genre, but personally I enjoyed the band’s growth and exploration. They later played my favorite song off of the album, “skin in the game”, which is around the time I decided to take my ear plugs out, risking tinnitus to get the full Slowdive experience. 

During the end of the third song, “Catch The Breeze”, the crowd was met with an intense amount of strobe lights and visual effects, immersing the audience into the performance and music. I found myself entranced by the visuals throughout the entirety of the show, which I greatly appreciated as it helped immerse me with the music. Another time this was present was during “Souvlaki Space Station”, a heavily droning song that was enhanced by a water-like background and softer strobe lights. It was so beautiful I almost cried. 

Being at concerts alone is always a scary thing to do, but I found this concert to be almost perfect for it. I was able to be one with the music and found most of the crowd surrounding me to be doing the same. Although, during their most popular song, “When The Sun Hits”, a group of younger people decided to start a mosh pit. Of course this wasn’t an intense mosh pit, but this made me ponder on concert etiquette. On the one hand, this group of people were at their core just having fun together, but on the other hand I could tell the people around them were heavily annoyed as this isn’t the type of music you would expect rowdiness to occur. 

They ended off with “40 Days” and said their goodbyes before coming out for an encore. During the encore they played “Dagger”, a slower, more acoustic song and then finished for real with a Syd Barrett cover, “Golden Hair”. This was the perfect song to end with as Rachel Goswell sung the few lyrics very majestically and then walked off stage, leaving the rest of the song to be an intense, fully instrumental three minutes that felt like an eternity. I was again met with being fully entranced by visual effects and droning guitars and shed a tear in the middle of the crowd. 

Overall, this was a beautiful, once in a lifetime (most likely) experience for me. This concert made me realize how much I cherish live music and how beautiful the music community can be.