I’m not gonna lie, but i was secretly frothing (Australian for over-excited) to see Twin Peaks last night; I had been flogging these guys on Spotify for weeks leading up to their Berlin show. A sizey little crowd had turned up to Monarch to suss it out, and with the amount of long-haired young dudes, long-haired old dudes, and short haired chicks, for a second I thought I could have been back in the
stoner rock loving, (surf) rat infested Australian town I’ve spent a fair chunk of my twenties in. But then I saw a dude next to me light a ciggy inside the bar, while the U1 rolled through Kotti in the background, snapping me out of my daydream and back to Berlin winter.
From the word go there was a ton of energy
We got there just a couple of minutes before they started – sometimes its nice to walk straight into a venue and the band you came to see starts immediately. Not aware of how young these guys actually were, I was quietly surprised when these five kids from Chicago started thrashing about. From the word go there was a ton of energy, which was refreshing to see in the sometimes techno-saturated world that is Berlin.
Five heads started synchronized banging for the first thirty seconds of the opening song, with all of them coming within what must have been millimetres of smashing their mics with their eye sockets.
Crisis averted, they continued to play a bunch of songs both new and old, which was a nice wave of fast and slow. Keeping the mood wavey was the echoing mic, and the boys channeling something between the Oh Sees and the Rolling Stones; one of them via his Mick Jagger-esque voice, and red heart-shaped guitar sitting high above the waist.
You could tell it wouldn’t be the last time you would see a Twin Peaks poster in Berlin
You could tell these dudes were super stoked to be there, yelling “Dunk her” about 193 times throughout the show because its their ‘first time in Europe’ and ‘it’s the only German we know’. Switching singers between the two guitarists and the bass player is always rad, and these guys did it a lot, while young Ian Curtis with a moustache smashed about on the keys: I reckon he had a cigarette in his mouth the whole time he played, probably just excited to be on holiday and be able to play a gig, drink a stein and smoke all at the same time.
It took them halfway through their busy yet short set to play my fave Twin Peaks tune (Irene), with plenty of heads bouncing about. Before you knew it their thirty minute set was over, with the boys reaching for their cheap German cigarettes before the distortion had completely faded. Saying ‘yeh mate sick show!’ to the young ciggy weilding, Mick Jagger-channeling guitarist on Skalitzer Strasse on the way out, you could tell it wouldn’t be the last time you would see a Twin Peaks poster in Berlin. These guys will be booking summer festivals next year for sure.
Review by James Rippon
