We got down to The Bodega to check out the goods from local acts Amulet, Chloe Rodgers and Nactus Kunan...
As I walked into The Bodega and saw posters boasting the slogan “make pop music great again” I’ve gotta admit I was doubting that Amulet could live up to their bold claims. But after an hour of Joe Soltysik’s huskily powerful voice, and the masterful guitar skills of Jordan Bramley and Mike Smith, I found myself taking one of those posters home, a fully converted fan.
From the mellow acoustics and hauntingly powerful lyrics of support act Chloe Rodgers (performing the best rendition of Rehab I’ve heard since Amy Winehouse herself) to the richly synthetic tunes of second support act Nactus Kunan, the night already felt like a promise. The risk of having such bleddy good support acts is that the main act can seem a bit naff by comparison.
I’m happy to say this was most definitely not the case for Amulet, and that more and more people filtered through the door as the night went on, drawn in by the lure of Amulet’s unique and heady sound.
I think my pulse is still beating to the drumbeat of she said she said, their opening number. From there I was fully in their hands, taken from a rasping, guitar-heavy track one moment to a near-ballad, that had me swaying in time with the crowd. The sheer amount of stage presence has the power to make you forget you’re in The Bodega with a few handfuls of other people, and could just as easily fill an arena of fans. Amulet have taken pop music – a genre too often classified by cheap, catchy lyrics and computer-generated instruments – and offered up their own hefty dosage of gritty realism, powerful in the raw emotion you can see happening behind the songs. Add in a crowd-favourite cover of dancing in the moonlight, and their set list alone is on to a winner.
It ends with Jordan enthusiastically throwing himself into the arms of fans and friends barely sober enough to keep hold of their own beer cups, managing an impressive two seconds of almost-crowdsurfing before he’s dropped to his feet. There’s a moment of musical purgatory, where I’m waiting for the remaining two band members on stage to start up another song, before the lights stutter on and I’m left craving an encore.
Amulet played The Bodega on Saturday 18 August 2018
Amulet on Facebook
The Bodega website
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