Pearl Handled Revolver and Teiger at Camden Club, London 2025

On the last day of August, I got to say goodbye to sun and warmth and summer with a double-bill tailor-made for happy brain chemicals.

Teiger

6 months since last I’ve seen the London outfit and they’ve taken that time to grow a setlist as tight and precise as a rocket launch. Teiger project the ungraspable threads of a liminal space band – a sound more easily conjured in in-between places, hallways and train stations and foggy forest trails than delineated cityscapes – with the hypnotic sensuality of a viper charmer, where we’re the snakes ensnared and fully focused.

Simon Rinaldo of Pearl Handled Revolver joined them for two pieces, including the show-stopping cover of Glory Box, sounding more raw and personal than ever before. Vocalist Talie Rose Eigeland has always walked the tightrope of soprano siren song with grace, but this night she played with an extensive expressive range of anger, disdain and seduction, like droplets of purple and gold on a ready watercolour. It’s a music of textures, drummer Jon Steele balancing glittering cymbals with Phillip Eldridge-Smith’s oftentimes illegal bass playing (The Thinnest Wall being a prime example of that close collaboration), which makes for a listening experience akin to fine dining: you think you know what you’re getting into, but every new piece surprises you into unadulterated delight.

While the bulk of the setlist is compiled of pieces off their luminous self-titled debut album, the whispers of new songs came through, promising something more rooted, less floating, yet every inch as captivating. An eagerly awaited release, if only to confirm what everyone who’s seen them live knows: they’re made for big things.

Pearl Handled Revolver

I often wonder: what is it about certain bands that makes their sound instantly gripping, almost engulfing, like running into Zeal&Ardor‘s act at Desertfest and being hyped and ready to throw myself at a barricade for them within three seconds (as a complete newcomer, mind you). Maybe your brain is craving a specific brand of frequency – something loud to match the loudness in your head, something sexy to make you feel embodied again – maybe the sound taps into a memory, a dream, a secret. Maybe they’re serving a cocktail of influences never before tasted. Maybe it’s just really damn good.

It was not my first time listening to Pearl Handled Revolver, but it was my first time watching their psychy blues rock magic at work. I have a soft spot for bands that promote their keyboards to lead instrument, embracing the multicoloured fog or sharp laser beams they bring. The atmosphere set by Simon Rinaldo on keys lent nuance to the main riffs of Andy Paris on lead guitar, darkening or softening the sound or adding a feeling of distance to Lee Vernon’s eagle’s-eye vocals.

With a setlist highlighting their latest album, Tales You Lose, the show-starter Junkies introduces us into this sonic world of loss and rage, of finding comfort and of watching things unfold from afar, a lingering aftertaste of the pandemic lockdowns. It never falls into tragic, rather the psychedelic quality lends it a stream of consciousness quality, of introspection in movement, in action, like the pilgrim pondering en-route.

Chris Thatcher on drums on the other hand had the very fun task of not letting any of this fly too far off the ground. The almost-tribal percussion to a track like Belly of the Whale grounded the operatic keys-heavy opening, while Gilding the Lily allowed the whole band to release the blues their hearts yearned for. Slide guitar made an appearance, Lee brought out the harmonica, and the show gravitated to that rare upbeat danceable psych rock that would have been so fun to headbang to.

One thing Pearl Handled Revolver have a death grip on is the building of anticipation. Courageous off their latest album kicks off with a barely-restrained guitar, the wah on it slick, the drumming cool and laidback, Lucas Rinaldi’s main riff casual. It’s no big deal, it seems to say, but the energy of it builds with the keyboard into a first lift of a Nazare wave, a mountain of water rising and crashing over you into peacefulness again. Lee Vernon’s storyteller voice comes in, “A life of waste / No place for babies / These days / Time’s tide will never break the stone“, world-weary and sky-gazing, almost a prayer as the rest of the band are barely holding back the next wave of gigantic sound. Live, it feels like surfing. It feels like courage. It’s my favourite song off the new album.

Most mesmerising to watch, always, were the jams. Towards the end of the night, they gave themselves more and more time to experiment and play within the ribs of a song, and it’s where it got really fun. Neither you nor the band know what’s going to happen next and you watch them watch each other and listening intently for that nugget of inspiration that can bloom into a full piece before your very eyes. Their surprise is ours too. Like good comedy improv: the process of it is as captivating as the result.

Do you watch the artists you love closely when they play? Can you catch the sparkling exchange of looks, the giggles, the stank faces when a note slips into something unexpected or a drum fill goes off the rails, off beat and off song, and slides back into place like a mischievous kid caught?

I do. That’s what I want to see. PHR were my first show after a long month with no gigs and seeing them at work with so much focus and camaraderie reminded me why I do this: nothing lights my brain on fire like live music, where I can trust again that people are fundamentally wonderful creative beings who delight in the work of their hands as a team.

It’s what AI can never replicate. It has no eyes or ears, it has no curiosity, it has no capacity for experiencing surprise. It has no creative process – it’s the path of least resistance, an obvious A to B. In the world of content, the natural progression is to speed things up. But it’s not art.

The struggle is the art. The effort and the listening and the figuring out is the art.

Music isn’t content. Music is how strangers face a wave together and ride its exhilarating roll as one.