Salem – Thekla, Bristol 30/11/10

The last time I saw SALEM was in March at SXSW on a crowded rooftop at 2am. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much. I was pretty drunk, and I’m fairly certain the band were in a similar state. What I do remember is being sucked into their world, into their dark and tauntingly sullen presence, their mess of confidence and unrealised ambition.

A slew of negative reviews followed the Texan appearances, not that the band seemed to care. Since March they’ve been hyped, applauded, tagged, criticised and most importantly, released their debut album, King Night.

Tonight’s show at Thekla is one of the last dates of their hugely anticipated UK tour, and the Bristol boat is ominously empty. It’s an early show, meaning I arrive in the venue straight from work to discover I’ve missed both supports, and it’s not even nine. At least that goes a way to explain the scattering of bodies in the lower deck as the hunched trio take stage.

Wrapped in large coats and crawling over keyboards, they don’t even acknowledge the audience. Instead a heavy beat falls in, slow and striking, Jack stabs aimlessly at a sampler, his face turned down. Heather wears thigh-high studded boots which seem to stretch for an eternity, while John stands forward, staring blankly as he drags at the strings of an electric guitar.

Intimidating barely covers this. It’s ominous and dark and unsettling, and the absence of Big Jeff headbanging up front does nothing to settle the tension.

As the opening haze fades into light applause a group of girls who can’t be more than eighteen scream something that sounds vaguely like, “where’s your singer?’ A faint smirk spreads through the now thickening audience as Jack stands up, taking a mic and switching with John at the front of the stage. The girls go wild as the backing track kicks in and he begins to spit, pulling his shirt up to flash flesh like some kind of MTV nightmare.

It’s a hard situation to read. The louder the girls scream their love, the stonier the faces on stage become. But they keep cracking. Jack’s the first to grin. He poses for photos, and retorts with light ridicule. During Heather’s tracks she reaches out and grabs the desperate hands of the kids who line the front row. Even John plays along in the end, holding a mic down to a praying mouth, then pulling it back with a curved smile.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: this is not how I’d envisaged the night. And maybe it even distracted from what could have been a heavy live assault of their dark and dragging debut. Two things which stood out for me though were firstly; the atmosphere. When the screaming subsided, and the lights went low – and there was just enough dry ice to forget it was nine thirty on a Tuesday night and just enough volume to forget everything else – then it worked. At one point I turned and realised the entire row I was stood in were rocking their heads in the same motion, rhythm and style, like witch house battery chickens. And then I realised I was doing the same. It was almost infectious.

Secondly; live, SALEM are not a band. Instead – as on the record – they feel like three artists playing each other’s songs. Each one of them has a different personality, both physically and sonically. This is what, for me, made a really interesting show.