Alone Together: Chastity Belt live

CHASTITY BELT

NEVER YOUNG

VELVET JONES, SANTA BARBARA, CA

08 AUGUST, 2017

Waking up from the citywide hangover that constitutes the immediate aftermath of the post-Old Spanish Days/Fiesta madness that envelopes Santa Barbara every year, Chastity Belt rolls into town, like that first restorative Bloody Mary the morning after. With new LP I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone out now on Hardly Art, the band is currently on the West Coast swing of the tour, supported by Never Young. The Oakland quartet set a noisy high bar early on, and proved an eye-opener worth following up on. Their sound gave hints of many different scenes, from classic shoegaze to DC post-hardcore, but remained defiantly their own. Their latest release, last fall's Singles Tape II: Soft Bank EP is out on Father/Daughter Records.

Front-loading hard and barely looking back, Chastity Belt has come a long ways from their formation in Walla Walla, Washington, and eight of the ten songs in their main set were from their newest release, with the remainder coming from their previous, Time To Go Home. It speaks to the strength of the proceedings that they could ignore the ostensible title track of the LP, such was the depth. Underpinned by Annie Truscott's bass, "Caught In A Lie" was an early highlight, and Julia Shapiro took over drums to bring Gretchen Grimm forward for her song "Stuck". Guitarist Lydia Lund took her share of the spotlight on her track "Lydia", and the inclusion of the delicately intense "What The Hell" proved a winner. Shapiro led the jam in an unhinged set closer, "5AM", and the band returned to encore "Joke". After chasing Chastity Belt around this great state, it was a pleasure to welcome them to Santa Barbara.

CHASTITY BELT

NEVER YOUNG

Previous Chastity Belt features:
LA, March '16
LA, May '15
Lancaster CA, October '14