It was nice to hear what Augusta Koch’s voice sounds like live, again, when her most recent project, called Gladie, stopped through Great Scott this past Friday, March 6th. The intimate venue hosted the Philly bedroom/indie-rock group as they toured in support of Safe Sins, a 10 song LP that dropped just a week prior to their show date. A handful of about 50 folks who fought against high winds and a late-winter wintry mix to see how frontperson Koch stacked up without old Cayetana bandmembers Allegra Anka and Kelly Olsen. Spoiler alert: Gladie is rad(ie).
Ahead of Gladie’s performance, locals Tory Silver and crew (introduced as Marcel on bass and vocals, Ray on drums) took the small stage around 10:30pm. She thanked those who showed up “early” for coming out despite the strong winds, and I wondered if she would also thank us for showing up to a public event despite coronavirus—she didn’t go down that road. Instead, the group played a skilled array of alt. rock jams, messing with tempo, mood and musical stylings throughout the set. Silver has a strong voice that curiously shone best on the band’s cover of “Archie, Marry Me” (by Alvvays), where Marcel added vocals.
Next up, the members of Gladie weren’t afraid to mix in the serious news but still stay silly. Their opening banter both broached the subject of this global pandemic, and traversed to ponder the names of other great Scotts: “Michael Scott, Scott Walker, my old roommate Scott.” I know I wasn’t the only one who appreciated the band’s ability to radiate good vibes and put on a solid show, singing the uncannily relevant lyrics to the erratic, spiraling “A Pace Far Different” while the rest of us lost ourselves in synthy, folky rock music for a good forty-five minutes or so.
“Pollution penetrates my skin. You said my loneliness is a safe sin, a safe sin. Wanna escape my mind, wanna escape my body. Wanna escape this place, wanna escape my body. Wanna escape this time, wanna escape my body.”
Lined up alongside a mystery bassist (jk, just didn’t catch their name), drummer Pat Conaboy (The Spirit Of The Beehive), and Matt Schimelfenig (Three Man Cannon) on guitar, vocals and synth, Koch’s strong, emotive songwriting, which she wanted to sound like diary entries, aren’t at all lost. Her sharp singing style was distinct on “When You Leave The Sun”— a crowd pleaser, and one Koch couldn’t help but bounce her knees to. Throughout their set, Conaboy’s kick drum shook all the cups sitting on the trim that encircles the venue. Schimelfenig was able to steal the spotlight for a tune, crooning folk-y/Neil Young-esque vocals over the hazy synth he’d been dishing out. Those synth sounds faded into one another throughout their set, leading up to the peak, swelling wall of sound on “Pray.”
Between songs, the band members talked about where Schimelfenig got his fuzzy, colorful albeit too warm sweater (Buffalo Exchange down the street) and whether Koch would be a good stand-up comedian (she wouldn’t, she said, but excused it by quipping “I’m bombing… now I get to make noise and pretend this never happened.”)
The four-piece ended their Friday night with perhaps the most fitting finale to their set, and to a week where coronavirus became a pandemic and Biden somehow won the Massachusetts primary: “There was an echo when a city spoke. It said, ‘Life is a cosmic joke.’”