So I was supposed to be to see support act Retribution Gospel Choir, a super group (well, ‘super’ to the likes of me that is) made up of Eric Pollard, Alan Sparhawk and fellow Low member Matt Livingston. They also happen to have made one of my favourite records of this year (thanks to Mark Kozelek’s production skills) So you’d think I’d be pretty pissed off at arriving at the Thekla to catch the last 90 seconds of the last song, ‘Breaker’. Thing is, it was such a blisteringly kick ass, conviction filled 90 seconds that I was able to take it on the chin.

Pragmatism prevailed and we stuck around for Micah P Hinson. Having heard his set at Greenman a few years ago I knew Hinson’s sound and that I liked it. His recent album is so sensitive and gut wrenching that it seemed a bit weird that the audience sniggered and laughed during some of his songs which had a lot of false endings in a “I’m gonna see if you bunch of twerps are really listening to me” kind of way. His albums go in for a stripped down sound and he stuck to that with the live interpretations and songs didn’t really end, they seemed to just crumble away into a poignant and heavy silence. I guess the crowd were a bit on edge maybe feeling the air of tension emulating from Hinson but he eased himself (and the audience) in to the set with a few inter-tuning tour tales and seemed genuinely delighted to be playing to a pretty rammed Thekla. I was genuinely glad we made the trip too but what was annoying was that the supposed ‘disco’ after the band finished didn’t seem to draw in any of the ‘Bristol Massive’ leaving me wondering why the gig had to start so bloody early.

(Review by Ashli from Spillers Records. Photo by Lou_natik)