(((O))) Live: Soft Blue Shimmer • Cold Gawd • Cheerless – The Victoria, Dalston

I had decided to attend this gig before the new year had even dawned, yet between that point and the evening of that Monday, my paternal grandmother had passed away, and her funeral had settled upon that same date.  Firstly, I considered whether getting to the gig was logistically possible. After some organisation and public transport timetable verification it might prove to be a push, but it was doable. Secondly, the more personal existential interrogation of the subject: was it “justifiable” to go to a venue, drink a beer, and listen to some touring musicians play when I would have left mourning family only hours before?

As you can tell, from the fact each of these words continue to follow one another, I chose to attend. Music is a healer; euphoric, cathartic, transcendent, and salve. Little did I know how much I needed it.

I am an avid London gig-goer. Perhaps that explains my ability to leap over the aforementioned nebulous moral hurdle of attendance. It also makes seeing a selection of bands in a venue new to me a notable occasion. Already two very different reasons for remembering that evening. Would there be more?

The Victoria in Dalston, London is a handsome looking pub outside and within, with a large bar at its centre, clusters of comfortable seating arranged at the sides, and a scattering of hanging plants from the ceiling. When I entered the premises, my first reaction was, ‘Oh dear!’  Someone – me – had clearly alighted upon the wrong ‘The Victoria’ on Google Maps and now my rushed-for and agonised-about travel had been for nought. I was surely at the wrong place. Best admit defeat, chalk it up to fate judging my decision, have a quick half-pint, and go home.

But no, wait, a glass door by the left-hand side of the bar, and here we are.  A nice little venue I’ve never been to before and can’t recall having ever seen photographs of. It’s really nice! I’m early! There’s me and the dude on the door! Okay, wrist stamped, I chose to grab that half-pint after all, finding that the first band, Cheerless, have shared a story earlier detailing that their set-time would be in, oh, half an hour from my first sip. It gave me time to reflect on my day, my loss, and get my head ready for a gig.

The local band, formed in Hackney in 2021, offer an extremely rich set of songs, mostly pulled from last year’s debut self-titled EP. Shoegaze is the through-line genre for the entire evening, but Cheerless have their own take, incorporating an alternative rock approachability and a guitar tone that has a Soundgarden grunge bite to its edges, rather than the ephemeral boundaries shoegaze usually prescribes. As the band plays the small room gradually hosts more and more bodies, breaching the norm, and choosing to start their working week with a heady dose of tremulous reverb rather than an early snooze having faced the trauma of the Monday blues. Instead, Cheerless – despite their name – help everyone start to exorcize that fact.

Cold Gawd are next up, all the way from the west coast of America, the sunshine state of California. A band I have been very excited about for some time, I was delighted they were playing London, and it being their first time was the main reason I found myself in The Victoria’s comfortable surrounds – having released successive critical darling albums, God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here (2022) and I’ll Drown on this Earth (2024), conjuring forth an extremely distinct approach to shoegaze. Their ‘downer bliss’ hybridisation of the niche but often well-worn genre, injects dream pop, post-rock, post-hardcore and even elements of alternative R’n’B into their bouquet of bludgeoning, sonic, alterative aphasia.

Matthew Wainwright, the band’s songwriter (and who principally records most of the material on record) is one of those unassuming talents. The set starts with him alone on stage, beginning with a hushed croon, before his bandmates slowly join him, and they launch into their mellifluous, canorous, sonorous battalion of mantras, that strive for exultant rapture. Perhaps it’s the headspace I’m in – albeit I can see it in the eyes of fellow audience members too – but the band almost touch the divine in this small East London room. The ground shakes, the walls bow, and this quartet incarnation of the Cold Gawd entity capture everyone’s breath, Wainwright gently cupping this collective gasp in the palms of his hand, as the rumbling bass, fluctuating guitars and simmering drums slowly fade away.  Magic.

As a joint headline tour, London is clearly the date Soft Blue Shimmer are closing the evening. A fantastic shoegaze band in their own right, similarly from California – Los Angeles, to be exact – perhaps with hindsight they wished they hadn’t closed the night I saw this tour. Cold Gawd had awed me and were going to be near impossible to follow. The band put in a stirring, excellent set nonetheless, though. Cold Gawd may have been supporting an album out on Dais only a few months old at that point, but Soft Blue Shimmer were building toward a record out that month!

The quartet don’t rely on the ephemerality of light, ‘shimmering’ shoegaze as their name might suggest. Rather they lean into the ‘nu gaze’ aesthetic of recent years, one that they, arguably, have been a leading light for.  It’s a sound that’s rather direct – rooted far more in a ‘traditional’ foundation of rock than a desire to float into experimentation. It has led to the band being invited on long rounds of touring with the likes of Touché Amoré, Portrayal of Guilt and Soul Glo, as well as being exalted as headliners on other weighty, premiere shoegaze evenings. It’s immediately apparent that this relentless touring has provided the band with command of the stage and the ability to hone a quality set-list. New songs lean more into pop than earlier work, but this allows for the night to close with a light, bright finality.

I’m so glad I went to this gig. What an evening. Follow your heart. Do the things you love. Tell the people you love that you love them.

We only get one life. Build community. Support the underground music scene. Connect.

Shout out to Cameron, Cold Gawd’s drummer for the brief but lovely chat after their set. And congratulations to Matthew, Mr. Cold Gawd himself, who got engaged to his partner Tori earlier that day.