by LE Francis
I didn’t buy tickets to this show. In fact, I hadn’t really listened to their music until a couple of months prior to the show. My brother had bought tickets for himself and a friend who ended up backing out & when nobody else seemed interested he figured I’d be down for a show regardless. Of course I was.
I knew we were going to a 20th anniversary of their album “The Artist in the Ambulance,” I knew they had a devoted following, I knew the show had sold out, & I hadn’t been to The Roseland in years.
So I dug into the original album on my brother’s urging — it had been massively influential to him as a musician. I listened to the album through a few times & I liked it, but ultimately decided to give the revisited version a listen. It was then that I really got sucked in by the gravity of the monumental piece of art that is “The Artist in the Ambulance.”
A brief discussion of the revisited version of the album
In twenty years a singer’s voice can definitely change & that’s undoubtedly what happened with Dustin Kensrue. But there’s more to it than simple time, than wear & tear, there’s an unmistakable depth to the vocal tracks in the new recordings — this is someone who has been singing these songs for decades & you can hear the conviction in his voice.
The band as a whole have also learned a thing or two in the years since they originally penned these songs. & each song has some fresh detail added, many feature collaborations from other musicians & bands.
Now, I don’t have the emotional connection to the OG the same way longtime fans do, I’m a fresh set of ears. My brother is emphatically a fan of the 2003 recording & argues that the original is rawer, hungrier, has more of a sense of self. & I can hear that. But it’s possible for both to be great in their own way & for whatever reason the revisited version really resonated with me.
My favorite tracks quickly stood out — “Paper Tigers” & “The Artist in the Ambulance” — but there truly isn’t a bad track on the album. & by the time June rolled around I was very excited to see the whole album live.
The Roseland Theater
Apparently, Seattle sold out quickly & if we’re already doing a 3 hour road trip, why not make it 6?
& I hadn’t been to the Roseland since the old days when I was in a power metal band dating a guy in another power metal band & all of us would follow DragonForce around the Pacific Northwest when they were on tour.
The Roseland is one of several downtown venues — just a jaunt from Dante’s, from McMenamins Crystal Ballroom — & on the next block is my favorite bar in Portland, Ground Kontrol (the best place to pre-game a show).
The building was originally a church and it definitely has a unique feel — the ground floor is a restaurant & the stage is upstairs with an additional floor to house the balcony. The balcony has seating which was reserved during this show, but isn’t always. I went back the following month for Between the Buried & Me & my friends immediately went upstairs to sit & were able to do so with GA tickets.
There is street parking down the block & I’ve parked in the neighborhood to visit Ground Kontrol with no issue. But Portland’s Trimet system is fairly robust & I tend to get a hotel south of downtown on the 12 line & just take the bus.
Holy Fawn
Holy Fawn is a massive departure from Thrice, not just in genre, but in overall feel.
“The Artist in the Ambulance” is at its core a post-hardcore album with a catchy, riff-based pop-punk sensibility to it. The crux of the songs is in the prominent guitar lines & blistering lyrics. Holy Fawn’s music on the other hand leans toward death-gaze or black-gaze & has a massive atmosphere to it. The dreamy, distorted vocals flicker like candlelight within a structure built as much on the cymbals as the reverb-heavy guitar tone.
Holy Fawn’s live show is enthralling. Though I didn’t know the music very well, I got lost in their set. The bass is a little difficult to hear in the mix of the studio releases but it really stands out live & draws you into the song, adding another dimension to the music.
My favorite song from the setlist is “Dark Stone” from their 2018 album “Death Spells.” But I’m also a fan of the two songs they played from their most recent release “Dimensional Bleed” — “Death is a Relief” & “Void of Light.”
If you have a chance to see this band live, do it.
Thrice
The most moving part of this particular live experience was the crowd. There was a woman standing a few feet from me wearing an old-school Thrice shirt crying her eyes out as she sang along to the songs. The crowd ranged widely in age, there was even a kid on his dad’s shoulders up next to the stage. But for the most part it was people my age – in their 30s – people who lived with these songs as they came of age & grew into adulthood & they were so excited to see a setlist dedicated solely to this album that was such a huge part of their formative years.
& in that I was an outsider. In 2003 my favorite bands were Iron Maiden & KMFDM. I was heavily into New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Industrial, Power Metal, & Grunge. It took going out to multiple DragonForce shows in 2006-2007 & being introduced to bands like Protest the Hero & Between the Buried & Me for my taste to slowly evolve toward post-hardcore, prog, & emo.
But I spent a good amount of time listening to both iterations of “The Artist in the Ambulance” & I was singing along with everyone else.
The band itself is incredibly solid live. Unlike a lot of the other acts I’ve seen recently, I didn’t have a lot to compare it to, I went in not knowing what to expect but what they played on stage was very close to the recordings – the band was tight on these songs.
The full performance included not just the post-hardcore style “Artist in the Ambulance” run, but a second set of tracks from various albums released since. Though it seemed like their sound had changed a lot over the years there’s still a cohesive “Thrice-ness” to them.
I’m just now branching out to listening to some of those later albums & no matter what they do they are unmistakably themselves. That is something often seen with musicians, artists or writers that have really honed-in to their craft & it’s incredibly comforting to me. It’s one of many ways that a particular body of work can talk about art in general, that no matter what the idea is, no matter how many people have that same idea – each individual’s perspective in that moment colors it a certain way. No picture can be exactly the same, no song. Not even the same song produced by the same band at different times – because experience has changed that perspective.
The experience was priceless & undoubtedly my favorite live experience of the first half of 2023, even though I was brand new to the band & album. Thrice blew me away.
Verses on Verses is a weekly music column from the perspective of a poet. Inquiries can be directed to LE Francis, lefrancis@sagecigarettes.com.
LE Francis (she/her) is the managing editor of Sage Cigarettes Magazine; a columnist & staff artist for Cream Scene Carnival Magazine; co-host & staff editor of A Ghost in the Magazine & The Annegirls Podcast; & the author of THIS SPELL OF SONG & STAR available through Bottlecap Press. She is a writer, musician, & visual artist living in the rainshadow of the Washington Cascades. Find her online at nocturnical.com.
