Mull It Over 060: SOAK - Live at EastSide Arts, Belfast
Refreshed and returning with their sublime new single, SOAK delivers an arresting performance to the lucky few at EastSide Arts - shedding a city, and person, that once was.
“Where did you go?”
After a brief interlude during their headline set on Friday night, SOAK appeared incredulous at how ‘polite’ the crowd was for this intimate gathering deep in the heart of old, industrial Belfast. Expecting more of a heckle-heavy audience participation type of show; from the likes of which they undoubtedly cut their teeth over the past 10 years of playing in this city, it was perhaps a sign of a maturing artist and their audience that tonight you could have heard a pin drop over Bridie Monds-Watson’s overdriven electric guitar and trademark winsome vocal.
Until I decided to hell with all that and shouted the above after a comically short turn from behind the curtain for the inevitable encore - much to the delight of this sold-out Titanic Distillers crowd as part of the kick off for the enduring and as ever, eclectic EastSide Arts Festival.
Questionable decisions to shout anything out at all at such a sweet, personal show aside, SOAK responded to my quip with the expected charm and levity we have come to know since they literally (to use a disgustingly overused phrase here) BURST ONTO THE SCENE in 2015 with their staggeringly accomplished debut Before We Forgot How To Dream (nominated for that year’s Mercury Prize and taking home the adjacent awards both North and South of the border here at home). Tours with Tegan and Sara and CHVRCHES followed alongside appearances on the always bouncy Later With… Jools Holland; thankfully keeping his boogie-woogie piano noodling far away from still, perhaps, their most enduring song “Sea Creatures”.
Tonight the distillery features a stripped back offering with a suitably stripped back audience. There is a tangible air of cool in the room as SOAK floats through a set of new songs, old favourites and a particularly considered Bon Iver cover - everyone around me relaxed to the point of taking ‘bedroom pop’ slightly too literally. It is an arresting performance. Across the hour SOAK takes us on a kind of Homer’s Odyssey through the last four years of their life where, mostly, music took a backseat for the first time in their career - flat shares in Dublin, big cookies in the Big Apple, Airbnbs with no locks or curtains and, perhaps least surprising of all - musings on, still, the biggest inspiration in their growing catalogue - their brother.
The four year gap between the last album and their latest release was not entirely planned, we find out as the show floats on and Monds-Watson opens their world up slightly during brief and personal sermons between each song. A literal losing of their voice appears to have been the nightmarish literal embodiment of a (to put it mildly if I inferred the connotations correctly) case of writers’ block.
As the set culminates with their latest single ‘death valley fridge magnet’ - the second to last song of the evening, it is evidently a new SOAK we have witnessed tonight. Fall away all of the accolades and notoriety achieved in the infamy of their career. Fall away the inner turmoil about whether music was, indeed, over for them. Fall away any doubts they or anyone may have had. ‘death valley fridge magnet’ is a confident career-best and a stunningly heart-wrenching turn that belies the dark and strange currencies of the past four years of Monds-Watson’s life. It rounds off a stunning set against the backdrop of a city, and person, that once was.
“Where did you go?”
“You don’t want to know!”
I would tend to believe it.