Davolinas and Precious Bodyfluid- Studenterhuset, Kobenhavn January 16, 2004
Uploaded to Aural Innovations: January 2004
A pretty decent crowd on this cold and rainy night for one new and one old band, but both fairly obscure. I met up with some friends, both expected and unexpected from Gas Giant and On Trial. The Davolinas (www.davolinas.dk) started about 10:30 and immediately started pulling the people closer to the stage. What was that fantastic voice and that heavy sound? The band consists of Lene on vocals and guitar, Anja on bass and Per on Drums. The bands opened with Seasonal Alternations, a cool mood number, a new number. The band have recently put out a quite good demo CD and played all the numbers from this CD, including the excellent "City Of Vinyl" (a dream for some people!). Some people would call this female stoner rock but that is to stash this band into a corner. The repertoire is much broader. "Hip Death Goddess" has this fantastic phased out guitar and slow droned groove. I love the Grace Slick influenced vocals. Fantastic stuff... "Sunday Morning" is perhaps the bands heaviest number. Lene really knocks them out with the potent vocals during "Infectious Beauty" and "Schizophrenic Disaster Love". The next set of songs, "Surf" is a real garagy rocker, "Calls" and "I Want You To Burn", were more straight up rock numbers and did not grab me as strongly. "City Of Vinyl", the excellent track from the Demo CD, was next and is a great track with a cool bass line and groove. "Exit Repression" is another solid rocker and a great song. "Stormy Street", a song from the demo CD, closes the set and has another slow moody groove. The band get called back but don't have anymore numbers and do a quick 1:30 instrumental reprise of "Sunday Morning", a song from the beginning of the set. A great reception for a cool new band!
Set List: Seasonal Alternations, Hip Death Godesss, Sunday Morning, Happiness is Fragile, Infectious Beauty, Schizophrenic Disaster Love, Surf, Your Sleepy Days, Calls, I want you to Burn, City of Vinyl, Exit Repression, Stormy Street, Sunday Morning (reprise)
Precious Bodyfluid (www.precious.dk) have been around for many years now but is not a regular band but a group of guys who have a love for playing music and the same interests. The band is fronted by Bo (guitar and lead vocals, from On Trial), Kjeld (former Gas Giant drummer), Niels (Lead guitar) and Peter (bass). I had never seen the band before. The band opened with a hard rocker called "Compliment". The next song had a great riff and I could swear he was singing I need to get Stoned again but it was "Stung". "If", has a riff very much like some of the On Trial numbers from the old days. This band does not have a freaky guitar or 60's sound at all though. "Can You Deliver" is another heavy rocker. The band brings it down a bit until the end of the set with not such hard numbers. "Icicles" was next and a great ballad, in fact, a fantastic ballad that reminded me of Neil Young. Bands like Neil Young and Crosby, Stills and Nash have a strong influence on the melodies and styles of the compositions and vocals but the riffs are often much harder. "Tsunami" rocked the house to end the set.
The band comes back for two encore songs, the original "Call Off Your Dogs" and a great version of "Cortez the Killer" by Neil Young. Bo was superb and Niles was a good Neil Young! Not too surprising they did a good version of this song as Bo used to lead the Neil Young band with current Gas Giant drummer, Tommy Dan. Anyway, a cool show and great way to spend a Friday night!
Set List: Compliment, Stung, If, Can you Deliver, Icicles, Mob of Saints, Interstate, She Said, Final Call, For all I know, Beautiful Dresses, Tsunami, Dogs, Cortez the Killer
Reviewed by Scott Heller