Photo of Delta Sleep’s Devin Yüceil by Laura Jerele
It is ungodly hot in the Duck Room tonight. And I mean that as the warmest possible compliment. The place is absolutely jammed with college kids wedged in every conceivable direction, the collective body heat of a hundred-plus fans pushing the room somewhere past tropical and into ewwwww territory! Heat from the hot, summer night aside, the Duck Room specifically does this trick where it makes every show feel like a secret you and a few dozen sweaty people are in on together. Tonight was very much that.
What I was not expecting was how spectacularly unceremonious Delta Sleep would be about the whole thing. These Brighton math rock heroes walked out, set up their own gear, ran through sound check like four mates who just needed to make sure everything worked, stepped offstage for about thirty seconds—thirty!—and then walked right back on and played. No fanfare. No dramatic entrance. No fog machine. Just four dudes in thrift store shorts who were very clearly about to do something extraordinary and didn’t feel the need to make a big deal about it.
The drummer is operating somewhere between a madman and a mathematician, and I mean that as the highest praise I know how to give. Let me tell you about the drummer, Dave Morgan. Because watching him navigate these eclectic, shape-shifting rhythms in real time is genuinely one of the more compelling things I’ve seen on a stage in recent memory. For me, he stole the show, he locks into odd time signatures the way the rest of us lock into breathing: without appearing to think about it. At moments the whole band tips toward prog and almost architectural, but then the guitars swell and suddenly everything drifts into this gorgeous, gauzy shoegaze feel, dreamy and elusive, like something you can’t quite hold onto. But unlike shoegaze, this was all high energy (which yeah, made the room even hotter).
Their energy is fun and relentless with all four of them utterly committed, all over the stage, thrift store shorts and all, no pretension and every ounce of themselves given to the fans there to have a blast! Standout songs for me were “Slow Burn,” “Unread,” and set ender “Lake Sprinkle Sprankle.”
Opening the evening was Michael Cera Palin, who were chaotic, punchy, and loud in all the right ways. These folks are not chasing perfection. They are chasing memorable, and that is a completely different and frankly more interesting pursuit. It works! High energy from the first note, the kind of band that makes you feel like this is the best show they’ve ever had. But the moment for me that truly stuck: their lead singer stopped, looked out at this absolutely packed, sweat-soaked room, and said that this night, this space, it exists to make everyone feel welcome. Especially our trans friends, and all but commanded us to be the best ally we can be, no excuses. Simple. Genuine. Be a damn good ally and make the world a safer place for our queer friends. Hell yes! The room got warmer for reasons that had nothing to do with the temperature, and that’s saying something because did I mention that it was already unreasonably warm in here? | Laura Jerele
