Photos: Whirr and Nothing in Portland

In keeping with the trend of photos posts of late, here are some admittedly poorly lit photos from Nothing and Whirr’s show in Portland earlier this week. With no local support, it was just the touring bands on a Tuesday night. Both bands’ affecting shoegaze is a joy on record but on this occasion, it didn’t translate well live. The ‘wall of sound’ cliché is very much alive with Nothing and naturally, vocals are low in the mix. In this case, they’re totally inaudible and while the band is still immensely loud with sleek riffs, it’s essentially like watching an instrumental band. This same issue dogs Whirr, which is most disappointing. It’s important to note that they are touring without their vocalist Byanca Munoz right now, which is a real shame as Pipe Dreams is an album that’s chock full of gorgeous vocals from Munoz. Two of the guitarists assume the vocal duties but it’s all lost live, buried under the wave of distortion. At one point a guest vocalist joined them on stage but you couldn’t hear him either. Apparently this was common even when Munoz was singing too. It’s puzzling. It’s seems that Whirr are much more concerned with being as loud as possible at the expense of vocals. So frankly, it was a disappointing show and you know what else is disappointing? My god awful camera and the quality of these photos.