By Jase Walker
I don’t think I have ever regretted doing leg day before a show more than I have today when I realized that Casey’s show tonight was on almost the top floor of Utrecht’s Tivoli Vredenburg, and while I’m perched in the venue now, my legs are screaming a bit. Anyway enough bellyaching about stuff I did entirely to myself, it’s Tuesday, the clocks have gone forward, we’re in reasonable amounts of daylight hours now and I’m about to see Casey with Mouth Culture so things could be worse I guess.
Mouth Culture starts a bit later than I expected but using the iconic music part of ‘Jaws’ as a walk on along with “we’re gonna need a bigger boat” is a solid choice.
They get things kicked off and pretty immediately they remind me quite strongly of Don Broco with their straight, energetic, epic rock. Their singer even slightly resembles the Don Broco vocalist too. I’d heard pretty solid things about Mouth Culture over the last few months and I’m glad to see that they’ve got the grit to deliver on the ways people have talked them up as well. It’s clear they’ve got some post punk and indie influence in there as well as there’s moments where they sound like The Bravery one moment and The Smiths in others and at other times I can feel similar vibes of other younger bands that are skyrocketing in the scene right now such as Static Dress.
They’ve got a pretty versatile sound unafraid of weaving atmospheric arpeggios saturated with delay and reverb or just going wild with a nice riffy chorus. So far it’s pretty clear to me that because Mouth Culture have such a varied catalogue of music, they could very easily end up on tours and festivals rubbing shoulders with metalheads and indie rockers alike. From my point of view, way off to the side of stage, their mix is fantastically solid too, each part of the band occupies exactly as much space as needed and as a result, they’re loud, punchy, but not smothering each other. I love their singer’s stage performance too, marching around like he owns it and he may as well, given how very comfortable and confident he looks while doing it. A real pleasant surprise for opening tonight’s show, smashing band.
As with most two band bills, the main act is in before you really have time to blink. The venue is pretty packed now as Casey takes the stage to inevitably take the audience on an emotional rollercoaster. The sound is a bit rough to start as the bass guitar seems to be way too strong and the other guitarist is having issues with seemingly getting no sound out of his guitar, they band carries on regardless, too late to stop now. Some quick fixes and we’re moving along despite him clearly not looking pleased with how things sound, nothing else you can really do other than try and fix stuff on the fly and keep things going. A bit further in it appears things are reasonably working as he’s getting involved in the stage movement now which is a good sign, normal service has now resumed.
The new songs from ‘How To Disappear‘ sound pretty solid so far too, and going off their comments about the set, it looks like it’ll be laid out as, first half, new album, second half, old ‘bangers. If there’s one thing that always stands out to me about Casey, is how earnest and humble they come across during their live shows. There’s not really a whole lot of pretense such as “look how badass we are” or anything, they’re here to deliver some emotional music as best they possibly can, you’re free to dance, sing, cry, whatever, this shows for you.
As much as the newer material has clearly gone down well, there’s an extremely noticeable shift in the audience response to the older songs, much more audible singing. Admittedly it’s not been that long since the new album dropped so probably not too surprising that it’s not had long enough to properly bake in yet.
It’s interesting looking around the audience though and the level of people chatting to each other during the show is oddly quite minimal, almost every single face in the crowd is utterly transfixed on Casey. The clear resonance of Casey’s emotionally heavy words with the crowd is every bit as clear as the last time I saw them, although the centre of the crowd at this show is definitely a bit more polite than Manchester’s was.
Seriously though despite the bumpy start, this eventually led into another top quality show from Casey. Considering how only recently it wasn’t looking like Casey would ever continue, they’re now at the top of their game and with the wind at their backs, no doubt going to go very far from here. Drenched in emotion, a truly superb show.
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