Say what you want about the blokes flogging bootleg merch outside of gigs, but for new artists, being big enough to be worth ripping off is a sure sign of success.
These were the scenes outside a rammed-to-the-bright-red-rafters of Koko, last night the home of NewDad’s biggest London headline show to date, and a far cry from their debut at cosier venue The Lower Third last September.
The Galway four piece, signed to the major label Atlantic, specialise in the sort of dreamy, soft-focus indie-rock that conjures up understandable comparisons to The Sundays, Lush, and The Cure: and the group’s cover of the latter’s Just Like Heaven was a light-flecked highlight, KOKO’s ginormous disco ball rising to the occasion.
This moment aside, NewDad’s staging was gloomier and cast in shadows, dry ice whirling around the white-clad group – together they resembled a boy-band era Addams Family.
Behind a white sheet, hidden helpers waved torches, and backlit cut out paper silhouettes of grinning devils and jaunty-looking skeletons, along with tiny ribbons dancing on sticks. Rather than opting for any pre-recorded visuals, NewDad’s army of puppet backing dancers performed live, sliding eerily in and out of view.
Though they revisited their 2021 EP Waves, bathing the stage in cyan light for their biggest hit and breakthrough single Blue, the set was primarily geared towards NewDad’s debut Madras: recorded over the course of two weeks at the legendary Rockfield studios in rural Wales.
The title is the Irish word for dog. “On the count of three, I want to hear everybody’s best bark!” demanded lead singer Julie Dawson. The venue gladly obliged.
Dawson’s voice, both saccharine and haunting, is surely the key to NewDad’s spiky take on shoegaze; the tension only ramped up further by the raw darkness within her lyrics. “You’re sweet, I’m sick / I hurt myself for kicks,” she sings on Angel.
Aside from a bit of communal barking, and Dawson’s opening greeting – ”this is f**king crazy!” – it was a show light on patter between songs, but the introspective stylings suited NewDad’s sprawling alternative rock down to the ground.
Thanks to the pleasantly surprising, TikTok-driven revival of somewhat underrated Nineties shoegazers like Slowdive, Duster, Pale Saints, Blonde Redheads, and Ride, shoegaze is having a real moment right now, but evidently it’s not all about nostalgia. The spacey subgenre’s influence is clear in the present, too: just look at the success of NewDad.
