REVIEW: The Menzingers/Lemuria, The Haunt, 9th July ’17

 

The Menzingers; photo cred @Archersongs

 

I held up a liquor store | demanding topshelf metaphors…

So last night we went to The Haunt down in Brighton to see Lemuria and The Menzingers, and I can honestly say it was one of the best nights I’ve had in recent years. The Haunt is tiny, and as Lemuria’s Sheena Ozzella noted, seems to live up to its name; its grubby mirrors and low ceilings make it seem slightly spooky. I love it and I especially love that they use the font from Twilight. 

I’d checked out a few songs by Lemuria before we went, but I didn’t exactly know many of the words. They were playing a lot of songs from their debut, Get Better, which is ten years old. The songs grab you with their vulnerability and openness and brilliance; these guys don’t take themselves too seriously and seem to delight in the mundane, and that for me is a very good thing, to take simple ideas and make them sparkle like this. One of my favourite songs was Lipstick, with its plaintive musing on kisses: “you use your lipstick as an excuse not to kiss me”, Sheena sings, and that short line has a clashing sibilance which contrasts beautifully with the plosives and overall is a work of linguistic and musical beauty. I also loved the last line, more than anything, of Yesterday’s Lunch, which mentions the “critic” who “wants to be a writer” – and isn’t that relatable! – and then turns to the sad but probably true fact that “you’ll never feel successful until all of your friends fail”. This almost sounds like a Smiths lyric really, and I love it. So overall, Lemuria are great, and this album stands the test of time.

Before gigs I always get a ridiculous churning anxiety that I’ll forget the words, but this time it was different. I mean, I was nervous, but even though I’ve only recently listened to The Menzingers there’s something about their songs that resonate so deeply with me that it wasn’t a problem. But they started with Your Wild Years, and I knew the words well enough to shout them, and then they played Tellin’ Lies and Obituaries and at this point I stopped worrying because these songs are songs you have to shout. And in a crowded tiny venue when everyone is shouting there is nothing better than the feeling of all being together and yelling along to Bad Catholics about communion and secrets. They talked a bit about 2000trees, which I would have given my right arm or maybe both little toes to go to, which was cool.

The Menzingers are loud and poignant and maybe hopeful, and one of my favourite lines by them is the “tangle of thorns” in the relationship talked about in I Don’t Wanna be an Asshole Any More and I can’t quite put my finger on why but there’s something there that can be untangled, I hope. And Lookers makes me nostalgic for stuff I’ve never experienced, which is the hallmark of any good song, I think. But these songs make me feel like time is getting away from me, and out of uni and into the real world it all seems to be moving very quickly.

I think my favourite song of the night was probably Tellin’ Lies, of course, and even though I’m not even twenty-two it and its concerns about everything being “terrible” – and “where we gonna go now that our 20s are over?” – haven’t quite hit me yet, it makes me not want to waste my twenties but also not want to worry about wasting them, and just concern myself with living them. With this album, The Menzingers joined Beach Slang in what Pitchfork called post-30 punk in their review, and this set was so good that I was worrying about it ending, and the sound fading. It’s probably not that deep or maybe just anxiety but I didn’t want them to ever stop playing.

There are no easy answers to these worries about growing up and aging that permeated After the Party and a lot of the songs on the setlist, of course, but when the songs are this good it’s hard to do anything but sing along.