Inaugural Darker Waves festival proves sunny Southern California is the Goth capital of the U.S.
"To everyone whose shoes got f***ed up, I hope it was worth it," post-punk artist Mareux quipped, as he looked out at all the beachside concertgoers trudging through the sand in their pointy boots. Suffice to say, it was.
The first annual Darker Waves post-punk festival took place Saturday literally on the sands of Huntington Beach, Calif., taking up two sprawling seaside blocks of the famous surf city’s Pacific Coast Highway. And yes, the juxtaposition of New Order playing Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”; Echo and the Bunnymen’s laryngitis-stricken Ian McCulloch rasping through the Donnie Darko-popularized “The Killing Moon” and his Lost Boys soundtrack cover of the Doors’ “People Are Strange” with surprise guest Robbie Krieger; Soft Cell screeching through the electro BDSM fantasy “Sex Dwarf”; and the tunic-shrouded, kohl-eyed Philip Oakey amazingly intoning the Human League’s proto-synthpop 1978 classic “Being Boiled,” all against a backdrop of swaying palm trees and crashing ocean waves, might have seemed surprising to the uninitiated.
But the truth is, sunny Southern California has always had a dark side.
In the ‘80s, there was the L.A. death rock scene, inspired by Old Hollywood’s decaying glamour and pioneered by bands like Christian Death and 45 Grave (both of whom played Darker Waves this weekend). In that same decade, L.A.'s KROQ was the first American radio station to champion the above-mentioned Second British Invasion acts, all of whom still have massive, adoring audiences in Los Angeles and Orange County. (In fact, bands like Depeche Mode and the Cure can still sell out multiple consecutive nights at the Hollywood Bowl as a direct result of KROQ’s decades of unwavering support.)
These days, Goths from all over the globe descend upon Disneyland, not far from the O.C.’s Huntington Beach, for the yearly Bats Day celebration (a tradition started in 1999 by two Goth L.A. nightclubs); a new supergroup founded by the Cure's Lol Tolhurst and Siouxsie and the Banshees' Budgie just released an album titled Los Angeles; and L.A. is home to a thriving post-punk/darkwave/industrial scene, led by younger acts that played Darker Waves like Cold Cave, Drab Majesty and Mareux. L.A. has also hosted two successful years of the post-punk festival Cruel World (which this year featured the first U.S. performance in 15 years by Goth icon Siouxsie Sioux), and as tens of thousands of black-clad, pancake-faced, SPF 100-slathered fans flocked to the beach this weekend for the similarly future-nostalgic Darker Waves, it became clear that SoCal is the Goth capital of the United States.
Thirty acts played across Darker Waves’ three oceanfront stages during the day's marathon 10 hours, with an impressive mere five minutes of turnover between sets. The offerings ranged from the classic L.A. punk of X and T.S.O.L.; to the nervy college rock of Violent Femmes; to the early-MTV new wave of the Psychedelic Furs and the English Beat; to the mood music of Clan of Xymox, Chameleons, and Deftones frontman Chino Moreno's side-project Crosses (playing live for the first time in 11 years); to even the peppy twee pop of ‘90s Swedes the Cardigans and U.K. buzz band Blossoms (the latter fresh off their all-Smiths Glastonbury set with Rick Astley, although Astley, sadly, was a Darker Waves no-show). And the biggest standouts, of course, were the acts that wisely played the hits, and nothing but hits.
Soft Cell frustratingly didn’t play what would have been surefire crowd-pleasers like “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye,” “Insecure Me,” “Bedsitter,” or, well, “Frustration” (although the deep cut "Seedy Films" was a welcome setlist surprise), and Tears for Fears devoted way too much of their headlining set to their excellent but largely unfamiliar 2022 album The Tipping Point. But when Andy McClusky took the stage, he immediately announced that his synthpop duo Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark would be “relentlessly” cramming their too-brief 40-minute set with “10 singles” — and much to the crowd’s delight, OMD proceeded to do just that, never letting up the energy from “Electricity” through “Enola Gay.”
McClusky and Tears for Fears’ Roland Orzabal both shouted out Devo as their favorite act of the day, and judging by the large number of energy-dome hats spotted on the sand (along with one boiler-suited, spiky-haired Devo devotee in full “Beautiful World” cosplay), this was an opinion shared by many. Devo, who were one of the highlights of Cruel World 2022, thrilled with several costume quick-changes and ahead-of-their-time classics like “Peek-A-Boo,” “That's Good,” “Uncontrollable Urge,” “Jocko Homo,” “Gates of Steel,” and of course “Whip It,” with co-frontman Mark Mothersbaugh even tossing a few red souvenir Devo hats into the delighted crowd. Devo’s fellow quirky mavericks, the B-52’s, also played a nonstop greatest-hits party out of bounds, climaxing with the most beach-appropriate number of the day, “Rock Lobster.”
“To everyone whose shoes got f***ed up, I hope it was worth it,” one-man darkwave band Mareux quipped at one point in the afternoon, shortly before he covered the Cure’s “Perfect Girl,” as he looked out at all the concertgoers trudging through the sand in their Frankenstein creepers and pointy boots. Perhaps more practical footwear and even higher SPF will be in order next time, but fans are surely already looking forward to revisiting America’s Goth capital for Darker Waves 2024.
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