No, it wasn’t Superheaven, Title Fight, or Basement who I went to see last Friday. Instead, I went down to catch Welsh band Shell’s set at the New Cross Inn. Truth be told, I had no idea who these lads were up until the day itself. Given that I was up for a spontaneous night, I bought myself a ticket for this seemingly random gig featuring this band I’d never heard of. Obviously, before I bought the ticket I made sure to quickly listen to Shell’s EP ‘The Need to Separate‘ (released 1st of March) and after less than 20 seconds I already figured that this was going to be a good night.

And good it turned out to be indeed. Though I didn’t calculate for the 3 (!) support acts that would be playing this night, too. Therefore, arriving at half past 6 at night turned out to be a little, well, on the early side. I’m pretty sure I was the first paying customer of the evening which made me question my decision on this spontaneous night out a bit. There’s always something to it when you’re the first one to arrive in an empty venue. However, that something is usually a bit of an awkward and sometimes even unnerving something.

Well, lucky for me, it all turned out to be fine and dandy. First things first: a big round of applause for the support acts Spiralling, rosary. and CHIG. I always enjoy watching support acts and I think it’s really important to do so, too. These bands are usually the ones deserving your support the hardest. For that reason (and also cuz’ I genuinely enjoyed it) I bought myself a t-shirt of West-Midlands emo band Spiralling. Nice lads making great music, contributing to keeping this emocore scene alive. Big up! I also picked up myself a sticker of rosary. but left feeling like an idiot after awkwardly telling their singer “You’ll make it someday!“. For context: rosary.’s set had a bit of a rocky start, therefore I was trying to share some words of motivation. Well, safe to say, that didn’t go very well. If this ever reaches rosary.: apologies for this awkward conversation. I didn’t mean it that way and genuinely enjoyed your set. Next time I’ll make sure to leave the chit-chat behind…

CHIG were really good, too, but I think they might’ve left after their set. Or they didn’t have merch. I don’t know. Either way, doesn’t matter. We move on to the main act now: Shell. I felt for Shell. Driving all the way down from Cardiff on a busy Friday night to be greeted by about 20 people in London isn’t the warmest of welcomes you would’ve hoped for. It’s a real shame. Shell were absolutely brilliant and they totally lived up to my barely existing expectations. Their set may have been a bit short but it was more than enough for me to be convinced by their quality. I picked up the aforementioned EP on (pink!) vinyl, had a chat with the singer and left feeling buzzing from what was a very nice, spontaneous night. I had some good chats with some strangers, too, who really made my evening turn out to be way better than I could’ve hoped for. A solid night out, perhaps even my favourite since moving to London.