Bodywash at the Raccoon Motel -- September 13.
Friday, September 13, 7 p.m.
Raccoon Motel, 315 East Second Street, Davenport IA
Offering a seductive mix of dream pop, shoegaze, and trip-hop influences with an experimental bent, the independent musicians of Bodywash headline a September 13 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, their 2023 album I Held the Shape While I Could lauded by I Am Tuned Up as "an experience that encompasses many moods yet is strangely consistent."
As stated at AllMusic.com, "Bodywash formed at McGill University in 2014 when Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter began jamming together in a campus rehearsal room after bonding over a shared fondness for shoegaze and dream pop. They recorded an eponymous 2016 EP with bass player Tom Gould, guitarist Adam Macpherson, and drummer Austin Pine that favored dream pop. The founding members worked to add shoegaze and trip-hop influences to the mix for their debut album. Featuring the lineup of Steward, Long Decter, Gould, and drummer Ryan White, it was recorded by Nigel Ward and mixed by Austin Tufts and Taylor Smith of Braids. The resulting Comforter arrived on Luminelle Recordings in mid-2019. By that time, fifth member Rian Adamian had joined the group on guitar.
"The core duo of Steward and Long Decter immediately began working on new material for their next album, and both the process and the material itself was informed by personal issues each member was facing. A bureaucratic mistake led to Steward losing his legal work status in Canada, and much of the album was built through transatlantic file sharing. This sense of displacement came through in both the tormented lyrics and a sonic picture that was overall more stormy and experimental than the soft shoegaze tones of the band's earlier material. Their second album, I Held the Shape While I Could, was released in April 2023." AllMusic added of that recording, "I Held the Shape is a step forward for Bodywash, expanding in terms of both sonic and emotional depth, yet being smart enough to never wallow too much in despair or lose sight completely of the musical strengths they'd established on their first album. It's a wiser, slightly wearier document, but also a far more interesting picture of the band than anything before it."
Bodywash plays their Davenport engagement on September 13 with additional sets by Muted Color and Blist Her, admission to the 7 p.m. concert is $19.84, and tickets are available by visiting TheRaccoonMotel.com.
