The Warlocks announce 'Live at Webster Hall' LP

Los Angeles neo-psych/shoegaze mainstays The Warlocks announce Fuzz Club live LP and share 'Come Save Us' from 2006 show supporting Sisters of Mercy

 

On March 6th 2006 the fast-rising Los Angeles neo-psych/shoegaze group The Warlocks took to the stage at NYC’s Webster Hall as part of a run of US dates opening for goth legends, The Sisters of Mercy. Fourteen years later and a resurfaced recording of that performance is now being pressed to vinyl and released as a limited run by Fuzz Club.  Due for release August 28th, you can pre-order the 'Live at Webster Hall' vinyl HERE and stream the band playing 'Come Save Us' below.

 

The eight-track ‘Live at Webster Hall’ LP is a raw, uncompromising documentation of The Warlocks in the early days of their now twenty-two year career. A set mostly comprising songs from their 2003 debut ‘Phoenix’ and 2005’s ‘Surgery’, the live album captures the band in their prime; just as they were very quickly starting to make a name for themselves as a main-stay of the late 90s/early 2000s West Coast neo-psychedelic scene (among such contemporaries as The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Dandy Warhols and The Black Angels.)

 

Recalling the gig and what it was like touring with the Sisters at the time, Bobby Hecksher (guitarist, vocalist and founding member) recalls: “It was our first super huge USA tour opening for The Sisters Of Mercy and that in itself is kind of a miracle it even happened. Andrew would always just really want anything but another goth band opening for them so this time around he went with ‘the band that sounded like Velvet Underground’. We learnt a lot about professionalism and how to play to crowds that really knew nothing about us. The Sisters have legions of fans that traveled with them and by the fourth or fifth show they were singing the songs and dancing. It was really cool stuff.” 

 

On what that era for the band was like more broadly, Hecksher continues: “Every show was like playing to 2-3k people and you had to be ON IT. So this is a very good time-capsule-like capture of the band becoming more OF A band, and us evolving as adults and musicians. It was a magical but stressful time! We’d just signed to Mute so were starting to deal with the machine and everything that comes with it. We were young adults dealing with labels, managers, money, timelines, being panned by half of the press who didn’t understand us. Decades later, it turns out the fans were right all along and ‘Phoenix’ and ‘Surgery’ still hold up today.”

 

Photo by Rob Johannes