Residence A lift the roof on a cold night at Hot Cat

There were so many shows on Friday night, I was struggling to pick from four I wanted to see! Hanggai & La Pegatina, Re-TROS and Chunqiu are all great bands, but the one I ended up at was Residence A at Hot Cat. I first saw these guys over a year ago at the GBOB Beijing finals and have seen them many times since. I’m really happy to see they’ve finally started getting some credit for all the hard work they’ve been putting with interviews in Global Times and write-ups on expat websites in the last few months, an album ready to release and a national tour in the new year. I’ve recently converted my gig buddy Alex into an fan, so this time we took along two friends who’d never seen them before.

Miss Freak

Miss Freak were first up. I’ve never seen or heard of them, but when I saw the keyboardists Perdel look-a-like haircut I wasn’t overly optimistic I was going to enjoy this! I’m not a big fan of indie pop rock, so they didn’t do much for me, but my buddies were convinced they have potential. I was just sad to see the keyboardist, who only played on maybe 2 songs and spent the rest of the set head down staring at his feet looking like he didn’t want to be on stage.

Christmas

My Mama taught me if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. So all I’ll say about Christmas is that the local crowd seemed to love them! I took that opportunity to sit outside and listen to ReTROS and Health playing in the warehouse next door.

Residence A

Finally it was time for Residence A. First thing I noticed is they had a new (or possibly old?) bass player. Definitely not the same guy I’ve seen them play with before. But he knew all the songs, some of which have intricate bass solos and he seemed to fit seamlessly into the band like he’d been playing with them for a long time. I’m not sure if this is a permanent change, but it seemed to work well for them. As usual they delivered a loud powerful set that converted my two friends into fans and drew in a lot of people from next door after the Re-TROS show ended.

Residence A

I was really looking forward to seeing these guys up close & personal at Hot Cat, but I think the venue was possibly just a little small for them, the sound was just too big for such a small room and the lead singer really didn’t have the room to dance around as much as he usually does without tripping over the rest of his band. I think they suit venues the size of Mao or D22 much better. Like I said these guys are hardworking and play a lot, you can see them at Mao on the 9th, D22 on the 11th and they’re opening for 2 Gallants at YGYS on the 16th.