LIVE: Saint Agnes @ Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, London
18/07/2014
Alejandro De Luna
London´s nasty infernal weather that transpires nothing but asphyxiation and dehydration, unexpectedly forced me to hide in the dark room of the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen in Shoreditch where just the obscure and black leather-driven noise coming out from the amps and a handful of beers could diminish my despise for melting in the streets of Hackney. The appointment is with Saint Agnes, TSOD´s well-known rock ‘n’ roll underdogs.
The last time I saw them was in a cold night of January at the infamous Bar Fly in Camden. Uncertain of the future and unsigned, the duo just had a handful of tracks, but lots of attitude, the endangered coolness in rock ‘n’ roll and a mammoth sound that transited between garage and psych. Six months after, the London-based renegades signed to Energy Snake Records while the world is still waiting to discover these underrated dissidents.
Presenting their 7″ debut single (‘Old Bone Rattle’/’Roadhouse Blues’), the duo composed by Jon Tufnell´s western guitar-driven delirium along with born-to-be-a-rock-star-with-an-undercut Kitty Austen, still carry the raw essence when they originally crafted their sound in the “horrible streets of Plaistow.” Although, the sound developed into a more glistened and complex pursuit for building nostalgia over sinister psych-like and Italo-Western textures.
Dressed in black and white as a symbol that defines the archetype of Saint Agnes; a badge that floats between the saintly and evil as well as the obscure and the pure. Guitar riffs a la Jack White while Jon´s and Kitty´s vocals define the plot of a dark sonic experience: crude rock ‘n’ roll passages full of stillness that unexpectedly become the electric soundtrack of an inexistent spaghetti western.
The awful sound in the venue didn´t matter. A handful of newbies on their setlist and their well-known psychedelic rendition to The Doors were enough to forget about the nastiness when the Celsius scale plays some bad tricks. However, ‘Old Bone Rattle’ – their seminal track and most important statement till this date – is a song that easily summarizes the essence of the duo: a dark atmosphere played at unhealthy high levels of volume that explodes into a climax of blues-driven riffs and solos blended with Saint Agnes´ eternal fetish for Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone. All of this, beautifully bastardized by a garagesque keyboard.
The problem resides that with a such brilliant piece of recorded noise, Saint Agnes has a hard mission ahead if they want to surpass their legacy beyond the greatness of this absolutely essential song. Time will tell…
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