Having been absolutely blown away by the She Wants Revenge live set at the Forever Now festival at the Milton Keynes Bowl last year on 22nd July, I had a strong suspicion that when this Los Angeles based rock outfit announced their UK & Europe tour 11 days ago that the tickets would be flying out the door!
However, I must confess that I’m rather taken aback as to how quickly they have all been snapped up, including their first ever date here in Brighton, where they are playing at the Concorde 2 on 7th February. Thus this morning the band have added an additional 7 dates which can be seen on the flyer below. If you fancy grabbing tickets, then it would be wise to head on across to the band’s website straight away, find it HERE.
If you’re still undecided, then here’s my account of that Milton Keynes concert…..
SHE WANTS REVENGE – The Other Stage 15:25 – 16:00
When the ‘Forever Now’ festival was first announced, I studied their eye-catching flyer which had the names of the acts taking part in the style of pin-badges. There was just one act name that I didn’t ever recall having come across before, this being that of San Fernando Valley’s (California) American gothic rock/post-punk outfit She Wants Revenge. Like the band, the pin-badge nearly went under my radar, as it was for me the least eye-catching of the lot and yet somehow gave off a mysterious air. I needed to find out more! I did, turns out that they were originally formed way back in 2004 and consists of singer and guitarist Justin Warfield and multi-instrumentalist Adam Bravin, and that their music has been influenced by post-punk, darkwave and gothic rock. It added that they have sold in excess of 300,000 records in their home country, but clearly they haven’t quite made it over here. Blink and you would have missed it, but on the 29th July 2006 their ‘Tear You Apart’ single spent a single week in the UK singles chart, peaking at No.73. This is the track that I first heard via YouTube literally two days before ‘Forever Now’ and I was waiting for Justin to sing ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ as part of the lyrics if you catch my drift!
This afternoon there are 5 musicians (all wearing black) on stage, with Jusin on lead vocals guitar and tambourine, Adam on M-Audio keys, Roland presets, laptop and also guitar, and the other trio looking after a third guitar, bass, and drums. The lady standing next to me at the very front was from Norwich and she had purchased her ‘Forever Now’ ticket with the main aim of catching this band! The stage was still running behind and the quintet bagan playing at 3:40pm instead of 3:25pm, and were due to finish at 4pm, but thankfully I think it might have been 4:10pm, and they only had to drop track 2 ‘Sister’ from their set.
The drummer kicked us off and they began with ‘Red Flags And Long Nights’ and Justin filmed the audience with his phone. Their sound on this track has a great beat which falls somewhere between Bauhaus, The Editors, and The Sisters Of Mercy. ‘Written In Blood’ sees Adam switch from keys to guitar and for the first time today we get an accompanying film at the rear of the stage. There’s another film for the slower beats of ‘These Things’, which is followed by ‘Out Of Control’ which witnessed Justin leaping from the stage onto the giant speakers in front of him. Adam’s keys on this were rather good I must say! Justin then said they are going to play a new song which had a “bang bang” lyric chorus, I think it’s called ‘Black Wax/Our Love’. Much to my joy, they ended with ‘Tear You Apart’, which was up until that point, song of the day for me, it even gave me goosebumps! She Wants Revenge were the best “new discovery” of the festival for me. I would love to see them live again!
She Wants Revenge setlist:
‘Red Flags And Long Nights’
‘Written In Blood’
‘These Things’
‘Out Of Control’
‘Black Wax/Our Love’
‘Tear You Apart’
