Gig nights at The Bunker are a weekly affair, but it’s not often you get a sell out show, however when it comes to Shannon Pearl it’s a different story. The local lass managed to pack out the entire room and had audiences hanging on her every note from start to finish. With support from Conor Michael and Solstice, the night was a blend of different genres ending with Shannon and her self-described ‘witch-pop’ music.
To open up the night, we had solo artist Conor Michael from the other side of the water. From the get-go he had the crowd getting involved, opening with his song Overboard, where he split the audience in half and had us sing parts of the song back to him, challenging each side to be louder than the other. He kept this energy up throughout the set until his penultimate track, Demons, where he unplugged, got off the stage, and played in the crowd.
Having seen him play live before, this is something that Conor usually does during this song as he feels it captures the audiences attention more and makes them really take in the message of the song, (we’ve all got demons). His signature loop pedal was out in full force throughout the whole set, however not getting the timings quite right 100%, he still got the crowd warmed up and ready for the second act of the night, Solstice.
Having been active since 2023, Solstice has only started ramping up their presence in the last year or so. Fresh from playing the main stage at Roulette festival in May this year, the band won the audience over with their original tunes alongside a cover of Lola Young’s Messy. I became aware of Solstice only recently due to their involvement in Roulette, but didn’t manage to see them that day as I was working on the upstairs stage, so this was my first impression of the band. I enjoyed the set and the chemistry between the members, and thought the lead vocalist kept up a comfortable stage presence throughout the set. The band ended by playing original tune Bottle O, a song about trying, and subsequently failing, to buy a bottle of water from a vending machine. Unfortunately, they couldn’t source a prop for the song despite trying desperately to get hold of one, which, ironically, fit the story of the song quite aptly.
After the crowd was warmed up and ready, the witch queen herself floated onto the stage. Dressed up head to toe as a barefoot woodland fairy, with a whole board full of vocal effects pedals, Shannon Pearl was pulling out all the stops. Opening the set with her latest release Echo, I could tell that this was going to be a perfect audience for her music. On stage with her were a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and violinist, which is a couple short of her previous 7-piece band. She filled the set with hauntingly ethereal vocals (lots of ooh’s and aah’s) and danced her way through the 45 minute performance.
Something Shannon does very well is her interactions with the audience. She made sure to include the crowd constantly, telling stories of her inspiration behind the songs, and having to take a few breaks between songs to blast the audience with a fan since it was so swelteringly hot in the venue. Similarly to Solstice, it was my first time seeing Shannon Pearl live despite knowing about her for a while now. I also hadn’t gone out of my way to listen to her released music prior to the gig, so was going into it blind, therefore it was hard for me to distinguish between the songs in the set. I did know that she describes her music as ‘witch-pop’ and could see that coming through in the tracks, but it also gave elements of norse folk metal music just not as heavy. I could imagine fairytale folk frolicking around the woods at night listening to Shannons music, which I imagine if the vibe she’s going for. I can’t help but feel I’d like to see Shannon play a gig solo without a band behind her, as I think it would be interesting to see a stripped down version of the songs without everything going on at once. However I do think Shannon is a unique artist, and I haven’t seen anyone else doing what she’s doing right now. She’s got a good thing going and I think her fanbase will continue to grow, and see her way to becoming an even more recognisable name in the music scene.
