Kristeen Young - Feb 23 Club Velocity are back at the Facebar in Reading and tonight they have brought along two very different and exciting US acts for the price of less than a tenner.

Kristeen Young has been recording since the late nineties and has an impressive CV, releasing eleven albums, recorded backing vocals on David Bowie’s ‘Heathen’ album and utilising Dave Grohl’s drumming skills on her own ‘The Night Shift’ album. I saw her supporting The Damned on their ‘Evil Spirits’ tour at Camden’s Koko back in 2018 and was suitably impressive to pick up her excellent ‘Live at the Witch’s Tit’ album. Tonight is the start of a UK tour in support of her eleventh album, ‘Beauty Shop’ and as it was taking place where I live it would have been daft not to go.

Opening tonight are Strange Cities from San Francisco and they elude a decadent coolness especially singer Daniel Clark. Clearly influenced by late 70s, early 80s bands such as Joy Division, the Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, and early U2, the band open with the wonderful ‘Cage’ and its angular guitar riff and beefy bass line. Within one song the band have pulled the crowd in and what follows is anthemic tune after tune.

Strange Cities - Feb 23 ‘Holoscene’ with its cries of ‘meet me on the dancefloor’ is another corking tune that could have filled the indie discos of my youth. ‘Dead to Dust’ is a brooding gothic earworm that you can’t help swaying along as the swirling guitars take you to a different place. By this stage, I am fully won over and will be following this band in the future. ‘Another Version of Love’ has elements of the Mission and the Bunnymen in its DNA and is most welcome.

Strange Cities are the reason why you should go and see the support bands at all gigs. Sometimes you will catch something special that will blow you away.

Strange Cities - Feb 23 There are a number of singers out there whose vocal styles can split an audience straight down the middle into likes and dislikes. And so for everyone who loves the vocal gymnastics of Kate Bush and Diamandis Galas, there will be an equal number of detractors. Kristeen Young falls into this bracket effortlessly making the best of her four octave range moving from sweet harmonies to shrill operatic peaks usually in the same verse. Luckily, I fall into the half that loves this style of performance.

Kristeen Young - Feb 23 Kristeen normally records with a number of musicians, but this time she is touring alone meaning that she is more reliant on backing tracks for a number of songs. When she is playing the keyboards, she pounds away at the keys, thumping them into submission with pulsating beats. Given that her latest release is a concept album looking at the life of a serial killer, this means that a number of the songs have frequent changes of pace, almost representing demented musical numbers that you can imagine being performed at an off Broadway production.

‘Sara Get The Baby’ is one of the closest songs you will get to an out and out single, and it is a cracking tune with its urgent and whirling beat. As this is the first date on the tour, Kristeen tries out a couple of numbers not previously performed before and they go down well.

Kristeen Young - Feb 23

There’s an element of performance art in the numbers where Kristeen lets the backing tracks take over whilst she crouches in pained positions to carry the emotion of the songs. More gothic eeriness follows with the likes of ‘The Beauty Shop’ and ‘Absence Makes the Heart Grow Father’ which captivate the room.

The overall set has been a pleasing selection of new material, supplemented by songs from her vast back catalogue. Before you know, the set finishes and Kristeen leaves the stage. As expected, it was an eclectic performance and I loved all of it, although what those seeing Kristeen for the first time thought, I do not know, but I hope that they found Kristeen as enjoyable bewildering as I did first time round.

Kristeen Young - Feb 23