Earlier this year, when I received a notification that the band Slift was playing at Lee’s Palace in October, I immediately bought tickets. I had happened upon their music on a random afternoon, sitting in The Embassy, a music-forward community bar in Kensington Market. It’s a place where the staff play whatever music they like, who are also–crucially–young and have good taste.* I asked the bartender what band he was playing, because it was this wall of psych-rock with virtuosic flourishes of metal and prog. He told me the name of the band, who were from Toulouse, and went to pains to focus on the album in question, the one we were listening to. The album, from 2021, was called Levitation Sessions. According to its Bandcamp page it was recorded “inside the ultra-high voltage electron microscope at the National Institute of Applied Sciences’ CEMES Laboratory in Toulouse.” It’s one 70 minute live-off-the-floor set, based on their studio album, Ummon.
So I bought the album and really adored it; how skilled the playing was and how their sound didn’t seem to veer into the sort of unintentional self-parody that can accompany metal and prog (let alone psych-rock). Every form of music has its tropes, the things that make it necessarily stereotypical, even if the “music” is chaos. And their tone! My god, this album bled tone. To be able to pull something like this off, and do it in such a serious and committed way, was something I admired. I didn’t want ironic detachment or self-knowing winks to the audience. That said, it’s a very specific type of music, and largely because of its bombastic intensity doesn’t exactly make for, um, ¿stable? music to play in the background or on my walks to work.
Here’s the thing: no matter that after a dedicated month I ended up only listening to them intermittently, I was desperate to know what they were like live. I wanted to see/hear/absorb them in-person and how they performed, curious how they could replicate their blistering recorded sound. Obvs, when I received the notification it was a no-brainer.
Months passed (aka the summer), and as the date of the concert approached, especially as I was coming off a hard week at the office, I found myself equivocating. The show was on a Sunday night after all. I was facing a brutal week ahead of me as I prepared–mentally and emotionally–not only for an upcoming four-hour Case Based Assessment I was randomly chosen to complete for the College of Registered Psychotherapists, but also for my upcoming hand surgery 😬 in just over a week. When the Sunday arrived, I received an update from the ticket vendor informing me that, due to issues at the border, the bands (the opener was Meatbodies) would be going on an hour later than scheduled. This meant that, optimistically, Slift weren’t going to take the stage until sometime after 10pm.
As exhausted as I felt, I was determined to go. I took an inventory of the least number of things I needed to bring with me (phone, ID, keys, etc.), because I wanted to be able to shove it all in my pockets. If you’re thinking that this was a preventative step for potential pickpockets, you’d be wrong…
(Side story: around two-and-a-half years ago, when the neglect of human-to-human contact became felt in my bones, along with other necessary disappointments and indignities–among them feeling robbed I didn’t have the opportunity to have a blow-out with friends on my 50th–one of the things I told myself I would do when things Got Better would be to get into a mosh pit. Somewhere. Sometime. Was it a declaration? I don’t know, but wishing for a mosh pit certainly kept my focus afloat sometimes.)
In any case, I proceeded to plan my outfit: old jeans with holes, basic black T-shirt, and a hoodie which would keep me warm outside but could be tied around my waste when it got hot during the concert.
It’s easy to misremember the interior dimensions of Lee’s Palace. It’s a medium-sized venue that can seem cavernous if you’re at the back, leaning against the bar (this was me during Meatbodies) or conversely more intimate down in the pit near the stage. There isn’t a bad sightline at Lee’s. When the opener thanked the audience and started packing their gear, I went against traffic and secured a spot at the back of the pit, knowing that the turnover wouldn’t be that long. Even as the three members of Slift proceeded to set-up their equipment on stage I still wasn’t sure what I was expecting, whether it would be Worth It, and another part of me was reminding me that it was a work night .
From the start it was clear they were there to deliver the goods: a full-on sonic assault, beginning with Ummon, from the self-titled album. It was clear why Slift is a headliner; guitarist, drummer and bass player performing as an organic entity, whose intense focus on rendering each song as passionately as they could was balanced by the fact that they seemed to be plugged-in as a band. No formulaic crowd chatter, no shout-outs except for a single note of thanks to the audience. Gradually, in front of me like a brewing storm, between those pressed against the stage and those of us at the back, I could see a mosh pit forming. Kids bopping…then kids bopping into each other…then kids pushing…and then the bopping kids crowd starts growing. THERE ARE PEOPLE MY AGE IN THE PIT! I make my way to the perimeter, and take on the role of pushing moshers back into the mass of bodies to prevent them from colliding into those at the back who only want to watch the show (please see this handy page for mosh context). It was while they were playing Citadel on a Satellite that I got so close to the whorl of bodies in the centre that I ended up being thrust into the chaos. I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been in a mosh pit (I crowd surfed in my thirties, I remember that), but I wasn’t prepared for it…which I think is the whole point. It wasn’t like I was doing this because I felt immune to danger. Strange hands pushing me about from different angles, me crashing into other moshers; at one point I was pushed backwards, hard, and almost lost my balance but someone was there to push me back in. You can’t control this. You can’t prevent this. You can’t analyze this. You can’t think this. And as soon as I was part of it, I stepped back and returned to guarding the perimeter, soaking in the music and the adrenaline (and yes, the sweat).
Slift probably played for the better part of an hour-and-a-half, maintaining their concentration throughout. My fifty-something body felt like it had been transported to my twenties, only the irony was that my body was in better shape (hello, gym) to be able to keep going for the entire set. When the house lights went up and we began to mill out of Lee’s, I felt lighter. The heaviness I’d been feeling was abated. I felt less scared of adult things. I was also proud that I stuck to my resolution and let myself lose control and fall into the pit.
* If you ever wonder where I find music, this is a great tip (cafés are good, too)
