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CONCERT REVIEW: Hot Water Music @ the Electric Factory 1/26
Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard aren't singers - they're scruffy, flannel-clad, Southern, guitar-playing lions.
CONCERT REVIEW: Hot Water Music @ the Electric Factory 1/26
Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard aren’t singers — they’re scruffy, flannel-clad, Southern, guitar-playing lions.
Hot Water Music has been pioneering a brand of gravel-throated rock somewhere between punk and post-hardcore (or whatever you want to call it) for nearly 20 years now. Their set at the Electric Factory Saturday only reminded the crowd that yes, their live show as refined as it is impassioned; yes, they will still play “Trusty Chords”; and yes, Ragan’s roar of a voice in particular is enough to occupy and quake every open space in the venue.
HWM’s set was balanced nicely with long time favorites from Caution, A Flight and a Crash and No Division, and a handful of tracks from their latest record, last year’s Exister (Rise). “Mainline,” “Paid in Full,” and especially “Drag My Body” were solid picks from Exister that highlight the band’s exceptional rhythm section (Jason Black is a bass guitar hero).
I caught Ragan last March at the Philly stop of his Revival Tour, so I wasn’t caught off guard by how jovial and appreciative he is when addressing the audience between songs, but I wasn’t expecting him to pour even more of himself into his playing — this is a dude who sings with his entire body. But the best HWM songs are always the ones where he and Wollard share vocals, the bromance-y songs like “Wayfarers” and “It’s Hard to Know,” where you’ll look around the Factory and find pockets of 30-somethings with neck beards arm-in-arm at the balcony bars, shouting right back.
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