NEWS: The Grasping Straws @ The Waiting Room

How do you like your psychedelic blues served up? The Grasping Straws have been described as creating beauty from confusion, contradiction and a mix of mysterious grungy rock or jazzy folk. Suitably contradictory right?

Fear not, singer and songwriter Mallory Feuer has a powerful voice that manages to search all these avenues and more, she’s also adept at breaking out a feral intensity in live performances that brings new texture to songs like How Will I Grow, Help or Enjoy the Trip.

Think Siouxie Sioux or PJ Harvey, or more aligned to the psychedelia of Grace Slick, that ‘anti’ performance made flesh, inhabiting the songs rather than simply pushing them forward. It’s a compelling sight and obvious focus for The Grasping Straws, but the backing isn’t merely propping up the lead here, intense beats and arch, even catchy, guitar and bass riffs that skew and punctuate in equal amounts. The clanging interplay of lead (Feuer) and rhythm guitars (Marcus Kitchen) or bass (Sam Goldfine) is a particular joy to hear as they all fluctuate wildly between style and tempos from song to song. The band’s recent album release, Patterns, from March year shows a band solidified in mood and witnessing that live should be an absolute blast.

The Grasping Straws play The Waiting Room, Eaglescliffe on Sunday 10^th September