I must speak my truth (rant)
My wife and I saw Trauma Ray and Glixen in Portland on their tour. Now that I've had some time to think on it, l'm ready to share my experience, and I need to know if I'm delusional and alone...
Glixen is... Not Very Good. At least not live. But maybe it also illuminated (to me) some glaring issues that have made listening to their recorded music harder. I've never been someone to leave concerts before the final encore, but we left halfway through Glixen's set. Here were my issues:
- It felt like we had paid to watch a group mog. Everything felt VERY superficial and insincere, and like they were mostly doing an instagram photo op with some incidental music. This was the biggest issue for me, far and away.
Acting "sexy", tearing at your clothes, and (seemingly) looking for phones that are pointed toward the stage is a major ick - although that's probably just a "me" issue.
- The mix was not good. I don't know if that was a venue issue or an artist issue, but the vocals were sincerely non-existent. Not in the "using the vox as an instrument" way, not in the "I can't sing and want to hide it" way (Aislinn can clearly sing, that wasn't the issue), but in a "I have to lean forward and watch the movement of the mouth to determine if there IS singing happening" way.
- I felt like I was watching a hollow echo of MBV. Like the goal of the group is being an MBV clone. I just feel like if the group is talented enough - which I think they are - trying to be something that has already existed adds to the insincerity that I mentioned earlier.
- There were three guitars on the stage, and one of them felt like it was a prop to be used for one song. 🤷. This one is another personal pet peeve. I want to see you play that fuckin thang if you're gonna bring it out on stage!
The performative allegations will never leave the offset community if we keep this kinda thing up😂
- The level of musicianship didn't feel evenly spread throughout the group or throughout the songs. One of the guitar players and the drummer were basically setting their instruments ablaze the whole time. But then the bass player was playing on one string for most of the set - which is not normally an issue for me, but when she wasn't mogging she looked bored! I could tell she had beefier chops than what she was playing - I would love to hear something more interesting come from the bass. The hired gun/new guitarist was fine and played parts that added to the walls of sound, although if the aforementioned third "prop" guitar had been played on all the songs the addition might not've been necessary. And I would say more about the vocals if I could have heard them, but alas 🙃.
This was all likely made worse by the fact that Trauma Ray was on fire (and might've been the best live show l've seen in a year or two).
I'm not trying to be a hater, and this is clearly a band with some great players who all seem like nice people, but I was really disappointed. I don't have anybody to speak to about this in my real life other than my wife, and I don't want to bother her anymore with my hot shoegaze takes Imao. We spent the money on the tickets, drove two hours both ways to see them, and I just got left standing there in the pit feeling disappointed, and dare I say, extremely unc.
Does anyone else feel the same?? Am I standing alone against the wave? I am prepared for the hate I am welcoming into my heart by putting this out into the world 😭