Yet another stellar evening at Bar Le Ritz awaits courtesy of Blue Skies Turn Black‘s stacked Spring schedule, and first up tonight is Nashville-based Huron John. It’s just him plus drummer Rick West, but if you think that points to a stripped-down mellow set, you would be sorely mistaken. The first song sees John (or is his name actually Huron?!) blazing guitar and keys like a heavy Alex G, between a couple of flashing vertical light stands; pretty slick for a Bar Le Ritz show!
He plays with vocal distortions a lot during the 35-minute set, vocally ranging from Bon Iver (the 22, A Million electronic version) to King Krule on the last song. He does a mean Billy Corgan on a solid cover of “1979,” too. It’s a great set, and I’m definitely intrigued to see what a full Huron John show would sound like!
It’s rare to see an artist with TikTok gravitas in such a tiny venue as this, so the 200 packed into Bar Le Ritz tonight feel pretty blessed to catch Freak Slug in here tonight! The performing moniker of Manchester’s Xenya Genovese, it’s been 5 years since she released “Friday,” which subsequently blew up on the aforementioned platform, and even made it onto my wife’s saved music reels on Instagram; high praise indeed!
Despite having only just released her debut full-length record, I Blow Out Big Candles, in November 2024, it’s already intriguing to see how her sound has evolved over such a short period of time. Earlier songs such as “Friday,” “Care,” and “Radio” sound like pure, unadulterated breezy bedroom-made indie pop, though with angelic Suki Waterhouse breathy vocals, and sound every bit like that in the live setting tonight too. In complete contrast, the new songs sound infinitely grungier, dirtier, and unquestionably needing of her 3-piece backing band to bring them to life.
And they most certainly succeed at that. The bass sounds massive on “Get Away” and the pop bliss of “Sexy Lemon,” which already sounds destined for bigger stages than this. The bassist’s French is solid too, explaining to the crowd how the only merch available is a handful of stickers; Xenya explains to me afterwards that she risked a $3,000 fine if they tried to bring the vinyl and tees across the border! Kind of a bummer, as I probably would have bought one of each, but yeah, probably not worth that kinda risk for just 2 Canadian shows!
Her iconic 2019 cover of Joy Division’s “Disorder” is absolutely immense, Xenya’s low-key vocal every bit as haunting as that of Ian Curtis. It sounds a lot more friendly at the breakdown on “Underwater,” in the manner of Lily Allen or Eliza Doolittle, but this only makes the return to songs such as “Killer” and “Spells” sound even more menacing by contrast. Notable mentions also to new song “Liquorice,” which gets a surprisingly huge sing-along from the rapt crowd, while “Be Your Girl” sounds fantastic too; to quote my buddy at the show, “This song is doing things to me, holy smokes!”
Xenya effuses at the end of the main set, “Montreal, you’ve been amazing!” We are rewarded accordingly, blessed with additional song, “Alien,” for a spontaneous encore not detailed on the setlist, a perfect garage-rock way to close out the 50-minute set. Without question, it’s a fantastic Montreal debut; surely bigger stages await!
Setlist
- Ya Ready
- Get Away
- Be Your Girl
- Friday
- Care
- Sexy Lemon
- Witch
- Disorder (Joy Division cover)
- Radio
- Underwater
- Hello
- Liquorice
- Killer
- Spells
Encore - Alien
Review & photos – Simon Williams
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