SKATING POLLY + LORD FRIDAY THE 13TH – THE HOPE & RUIN, BRIGHTON 6.10.26
Felix Lenz didn’t saunter on for ‘Diapers’. He ran in from the back of the room, and from there the night was his.
Lord Friday The 13th are a force of nature… Felix and his big sister Sloane, from Athens, Texas, by way of Austin and now LA. He sings, she plays guitar, and their own blurb calls it dollar-store trash-glam punk. That undersells it. Think Bolan gone punk metal, with a bit of Avatar’s circus thrown in. Oh, and their drummer is a monster…
Felix. He’s tall and skinny and uses all of it. At one point he looks set to put his head through the ceiling. A few songs later he’s got it between his legs.
‘Patent Leather’ struts. ‘Ann Drogenous’ is exactly the pun you think it is. ‘Babes In Boyland’ takes the layers off dating men, and along the way ‘Resurrection’ gets sung with the stress firmly on the erection. ‘Hot For Preacher’ comes billed as lived experience (he can’t lie, apparently), and from a man raised in what he’s called a super-conservative Christian town, well, you believe it.
Not everything is a song in the strict sense. One is mostly a string of “oohs”, “aahs” and “whoops”. Another is spoken rather than sung: cry if you feel like crying.
The gaps between songs are half the show. There’s a rhapsody on European retail (“it’s soooo…”), stray thoughts on Denmark and hamburgers, and the introduce the band is a slice of poetry in motion in its own right..
Someone once described them as Liza Minnelli fronting the Sex Pistols. On this evidence it’s closer to her mum: Judy Garland running on coffee, cigs and spectacle. It’s daft on purpose, and it works because the songs are strong enough to carry the gag as far as it can go.
Lord Friday The 13th:
Felix – vocals
Sloane – guitar
Unknown – bass
Unknown – drums
Lord Friday The 13th setlist likely included:
‘Diapers’
‘Patent Leather’
‘Ann Drogenous’
‘Babes In Boyland’
‘Sleeping Cutie’
‘Wallace & Vomit’
‘Resurrection’
‘Hot For Preacher’
‘On The Map’
‘St. Judy’
‘Bigots Beware’
‘Where The Hell Are We?’
‘Big Mac’
Skating Polly have the task of following that. The Oklahoma trio have been going since 2009, when stepsisters Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse formed the band aged nine and 14. Kelli’s brother Kurtis joined on drums in 2017. They’ve opened for Babes in Toyland and toured with Kate Nash and Deerhoof. They call what they do ugly pop, and they’re good at it: sweet vocals that turn to snarls, and guitars with real grunge weight. Even if there are only three strings on the bass.
One song was written in 2019 about Americans being angry together. They introduce it as more pertinent now than when they wrote it. That’s hard to argue given how Trump is pushing for a civil war.
Kurtis is the standout. Really. He’s a mental drummer, and for long stretches he’s the most watchable thing on stage. In that “how is the kid the work experience kid from accounts hitting those things so hard” sort of way…
There’s nothing wrong with their set. It’s just that after Lord Friday, a band just playing its songs very well sounds … I dunno…’tidy’. Skating Polly have definitely earned their place at the top of the bill. But every day of the week, Lord Friday are the band I’ll be telling people about.
My notebook from the night reads: provocative buttocks. Intro intro intro. Patent leather.
What more can I say?
Skating Polly:
Kelli Mayo – lead & backing vocals, bass
Peyton Bighorse – guitar, lead & backing vocals
Kurtis Mayo – drums, backing vocals
Skating Polly setlist:
‘Singalong’
‘Hickey King’
‘I’m Sorry For Always Apologizing’
‘Little Girl Blue And The Battle Envy’
‘Free Will At Ease’
‘Grannies’
‘Krobus’
‘Louder In Outer Space’
‘Man Out There’ (with Felix from Lord Friday The 13th)
‘All The Choices’
‘Queen For A Day’
‘Send A Priest’
‘Hail Mary’
‘Camelot’
‘Hey Sweet’
‘They’re Cheap (I’m Free)’
