Band of Skulls Reminisce and Rock Celebrating Ten Years of Baby Darling Dollface Honey
Band of Skulls
Southhampton three-piece Band of Skulls, who you will be forgiven for not being intimately familiar with, made, full stop, one of the best (and grossly, grossly underappreciated) albums of 2009. Baby Darling Dollface Honey is solid from start to finish, and the four albums (and tours, including an opening stint for Muse) since, including the recent Love Is All You Love, have only the band’s place in the rock hierarchy. Saturday night, the trio took to Belly Up’s stage for the third stop of this tour.
The late show began with other British trio Demob Happy, who audience members compared to less polished Primus. As tends to be the case with openers, the crowd was content to chat throughout the set, despite the group’s best efforts for audience participation. While the music sounded good, the band was hurt by a lack of strong vocals, which may have helped keep the audience’s attention.
Band of Skulls, in contrast, sounded polished and together as they ripped in to a collection of tracks across their five albums. The hits celebrating ten years were crowd favorites, particularly the always-chilling “Cold Fame”; Bassist (and cover artist) Emma couldn’t contain her joy in hearing the collective voices singing the sing back to her. Guitarist Russell displayed a similar joy throughout the evening, dryly bantering about the infancy of this tour, stating: “We’re going to do something different… that we definitely did not also do last night,” in reference to an acoustic break offering new takes on songs both new and old.
The band closed down their 20 song set list with favorites “I Know What I Am” and “Asleep at the Wheel,” before returning for the final three songs via encore, and greeting fans at the merch table.