[REVIEW] The Casket Girls w/ Dreamend & Coconut Milk | 8.14.14 @ The End

The Casket Girls, Dreamend, Coconut Milk
The End, Nashville, TN
August 14, 2014
Review by Jacqui Sahagian

Last Thursday Savannah, Georgia’s Graveface Records took over The End to showcase the label’s shoegaze weirdness with electro pop duo The Casket Girls and label head Ryan Graveface’s noisy three-piece Dreamend. The Cincinnati-based indie pop band Coconut Milk opened, but their harmonies did nothing to prepare us for the bizarre antics of the Casket Girls.

Read our full review of the show and find out more about the Southern sisters with a few screws loose after the jump.

The bass player from Coconut Milk informed us before they played that it was only the group’s fourth show, and the five-piece gave a solid performance for being so inexperienced. Frontman Alex Baker shared some nice melodic harmonies with keyboard player Kat Farmer. Their mellow sound felt a bit out of place alongside the other groups on the bill, but the fact that Coconut Milk are already playing outside their hometown and releasing an EP this early on is a good sign for the group. You can listen to their song “Honeysuckle Trees” on Bandcamp now, and their debut EP is promised to be released at the end of the month.

Dreamend is known for being the main creative outlet of Graveface Records owner Ryan Graveface. The tight three-piece plays heavy shoegaze with Graveface performing off to the side of the stage while wearing a bizarre ski mask with some sort of microphone inside it. Many of the songs were heavily instrumental, which showed off the unique guitar tones that were Dreamend’s strong suit. The rhythm section were also impressive, giving the feeling that they’d been playing together awhile despite their young age, and the little on-stage banter was actually endearing. “The setlist is a fucking downer,” Graveface sort-of apologized midway through their set.

The members of Dreamend returned to the stage to provide the backing band for sisters Elsa and Phaedra Greene, who musically call themselves the Casket Girls. The Girls developed a characteristically bizarre approach to getting over stage fright by donning long blonde wigs and dark sunglasses and creating strange choreography to go with their dreamy synth pop. The dance moves were like a ’60s girl group on some very weird drugs. Elsa and Phaedra did yoga onstage, rolled around on the floor, and at the end of their set ran out into the audience and hugged everyone who came to the show. The jury’s out on whether or not they can actually sing — their vocals were not nearly loud enough to understand the lyrics or figure out whether they have decent voices — but they seem to be getting as far as sheer weirdness will take them.

If you want to learn a little bit more about the Casket Girls’ influences and creative process, you can read our interview with Elsa that previewed the show here.