Chalk live at Bristol Fleece: Gig Review

Chalk by Patricia Rosingana

4 stars hq

One cannot help thinking of the festivals at this time of year, and the show prompts the thought that Chalk are made for something bigger.

Although it’s only a few weeks old, Chalk’s debut album Crystalpunk deserved a better response.

The culmination of five years’ work by the duo of Ross Cullen and Benedict Goddard, it’s a glorious melting pot of every electro-outfit of note over the last three decades, all sloshed together to create something urgent, muscular and entirely their own.

So it’s no surprise that they can successfully translate it to the live stage (with exceptionable help from drummer Fion McAleavey), but even then it fails to prepare for the abrasive, electro-punk storm that follows.

With elements of Nine Inch Nails, The Prodigy, Aphex Twin and Underworld, it’s a cacophony of electronic punk.

The trio make a muted entrance before opening with the marauding Tongue. Built on Depeche Mode-esque synths, it swaggers malevolently despite going through a sequence of changes.

Remarkably, it clocks in at under three minutes, but by the end you feel like you’ve already been dragged through something far longer.

Pain shifts gears slightly, trading brute force for something more ethereal but equally exhilarating. A topless Cullen shadow boxes while Goddard takes double-duty, shifting from guitar to synths then back again.

Can’t Feel It mixes yearning vocals and a melancholy melody with euphoria. For a crowd that, up to this point, were steadfastly refusing to move, things do loosen up, with nodding heads and shifting feet.

Claw, lifted from 2024 EP Conditions II, is a spindly, intricate thing, all wiry textures and nervous energy.

It’s followed by One-Nine-Eight-Zero, an unapologetically pop-trance track complete with an arms-aloft chorus designed for collective release.

Once again, the response is oddly muted. However, it says more about the room than the band, who deliver with conviction.

In truth, Chalk require youthful energy from a crowd, but the Bristol crowd for this type of music is often more discerning (older), and it is a Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, the brooding, brilliantly titled Pool Scene hints at Chalk’s film school roots, cinematic in scope.

Then, on Longer, Goddard’s guitars are gargantuan, while its mid-section grinds like relentless machinery before moving fully into emo territory, with a snarling, heavy chorus full of early-2000s angst.

Meanwhile the fittingly named Static is a volatile jolt to the system just when things threaten to plateau.

The band throw everything at the performance; Goddard is never still, Cullen wrenches everything he can out of his voice and McAleavey’s drumming is impossible to ignore, forcefully driving everything forward.

The trio operate like a tightly wound mechanism, while the frontman deploys certain tricks (splitting the crowd, going into it) when not playing his own guitar.

They close with Beal Feirste, an Underworld song in all but artist; propulsive and built for bodies moving ‘shoulder to shoulder’ as the lyrics suggest (albeit if not the original intention; the refrain lifted from the all-island Ireland rugby anthem Call).

A strobe light kicks in, aiming for transcendence, but in The Fleece it doesn’t quite have the required effect, with the space too contained for what the song is reaching for.

Indeed, one cannot help thinking of the festivals at this time of year, and the show prompts the thought that Chalk are made for something bigger.

Their dense, punishing and exhilarating would have a suitably sized tent eating out of their hands.

Apologies to them on behalf of Bristol.

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