To kick things off:
I attended a King Krule show. For the uninitiated, a English post-punk outfit led by Archie Marshall (who's more commonly referred to as King Krule himself).
The set was opened by Slauson Malone, who's music is most closely described as experimental/abstract hiphop but the music he played was largely genreless. Was just him with a guitar and a computer and some mixing equipment, accompanied by what seemed to be a balding middle-aged man playing a cello, who took his shoes and socks off immediately after entering the stage, which incited cheers and applause from the crowd. The music these two produced was pretty abstract, it was just the guitar and cello meandering though passages, melodies and progressions, interspersed with Slauson accompanying with creaky, sorrowful singing. His approach to vocal performance was interesting - sometimes his voice was pitch shifted much lower, sometimes much higher than it naturally was. His vocal passages would escalate from dreadful singing to animalistic screeching, often without warning. At one point during the set his shrieking escalated into him approaching the front of the stage and violently writhing and rolling around on the floor, drenching himself in rainwater (the venue was outdoors). All in all, fantastic and emotionally charged performance by Slauson Malone.
Then came King Krule and his band. Their sound was engineered beautifully, every instrument was very clearly audible but not overpowering, and their performance sounded almost exactly like the studio versions do. Loud booming bass guitar, crisp drums, echoing and soaring vocals and cavernous and soulful saxophone solos. The whole thing sounded warm and fat as fuck (pause). The drummer was extremely skilled and crisp and slayed every second of his performance. The sax player was a joy to watch as he was clearly absolutely amped about the music he was playing. Whenever he wasn't playing he was wildly dancing and jumping around the stage as if he was in the pit with the audience. The music itself was heavy, emotionally charged and nostalgic, as post-punk tends to be. Fittingly, it's grooves for a rainy day, which is exactly what drenched the audience during the show. I can't really do it justice with words but if you care to listen:
View: https://youtu.be/A712DL56J9Q
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5-f1Bnltu8
As a whole everybody on stage absolutely killed it and the crowd was fucken frothing. At the end of the show the audience wildly demanded an encore and they got a very good one. All said and done, 10/10 show.
They're touring the west coast right now and are heading to Europe before the end of the month. If you're in their path I highly recommend you attend their show. Cheers.
