A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

I have had the mis­for­tune this win­ter to always man­age to choose the cold­est night of the week to head out to D-22, and last night was no excep­tion. At least this time, I made the trip by taxi and not train, but the fact still remains. Unlike pre­vi­ous chilly nights out Wudaokou way, though, there was no draft inside D-22. There was no room for a draft, as it seemed like every punk rock fan in the area had got­ten sick of there being no gigs for two weeks in a row and had packed into the tiny lit­tle area. It was great, though, and just how I like my venues — packed to the rafters with no emer­gency exit strat­egy. The extra level of dan­ger adds a cer­tain je ne sais quoi to the evening.

Fire safety codes aside, the night went well. I arrived towards the end of Fat City’s set which, to be hon­est, worked out well. “Exper­i­men­tal noise” is not a genre I can very eas­ily get into, and I’m sorry to say that see­ing it per­formed live didn’t help its case at all. They did make some inter­est­ing sounds, and when­ever a song started out I was inspired to lis­ten, but after four min­utes of effec­tively the same sounds being manip­u­lated, with­out lyrics to accom­pany them, I was far more inter­ested in my beer and my gig mate than the music.

Then, just before 11PM, Our­self Beside Me was up. I’d heard of the band a while ago, back when I first found out that D-22 had given rise to the Maybe Mars record label and was check­ing out all the bands that called the venue their home. I ran into them again when look­ing up Hang On The Box and see­ing where the mem­bers had gone after­wards, but I had never both­ered lis­ten­ing to their music since I never saw them listed as play­ing in Bei­jing. As soon as they took the stage, though, drain­ing their beers before they started to play, I knew I was in for a good show. While they were them­selves fairly low-energy, their music is much more ener­getic than their recorded songs might have you believe. (Check them out on Google Music if you’re in China.) It can sound a lit­tle monot­o­nous, like a lot of punk music can, but they’re a bril­liant live act, engag­ing the audi­ence with their music if not with their on-stage per­son­al­i­ties. I think my favorite song of theirs was Sun­day Girl, which they played early on in the set — after which they asked for more beers.

After Our­self Beside Me, and once I’d man­aged to make my way a lit­tle closer to the stage in the between-sets shuf­fle, B-Side Lovers emerged at around mid­night. B-Side Lovers is what hap­pened after Hedge­hog lost their bass player, and I have to say that, with as much love and respect as I have for the bass line, the pair left­over do not suf­fer from the loss. I have always been absolutely in love with drum­mer Shi Lu, and this per­for­mance did not change my mind. She’s a phe­nom­e­nal drum­mer, and man­ages to sing with such energy that I hon­estly won­der how she does it most of the time. They did not want for energy, and I really enjoyed the set.

Even when the guy in front of me puked on the floor.

Oh, D-22. Stay classy.

After B-Side Lovers, at 1AM were The Molds. After lis­ten­ing to the tracks on their MySpace, I was pretty inter­ested to see what they were like live. They reminded me of Pavement’s “Killing Moon” and had that Don­nie Darko sound­track sort of vibe, but unfor­tu­nately they were short one man and miss­ing a lot of energy. I stuck around for a cou­ple of songs for the sake of the new beer that I had pur­chased, but ended up bail­ing after about twenty min­utes. Hope­fully the next time I catch them will be more inspiring.

All in all, this was a really good re-entry to the indie music scene after nearly a month off. I’m excited to see how Hedgehog/B-Side Lovers progress, and will def­i­nitely be catch­ing Our­self Beside Me again.