Photos by Megan Hirao
On January 22nd, downtown San Diego’s beloved House of Blues found its shoebox-sized Voodoo Room swallowed by oceanic swells and thick sheets of narcotic shimmer. As the ritual took form, trails of delay collided with distorted breaths, folding into one as the room fell under the spell of its now de facto priests of noise: San Francisco's very own psychedelic shoegazers, LSD and the Search for God.
Arriving in San Diego on the second leg of their winter southwest tour, I’d be lying if I said my expectations were anything more than a glaring unknown. Their reputation certainly preceded them; the near-omnipresence of tracks like “Starting Over” in edits, TikToks, and even my own late-night listening sessions made that glaringly clear, yet the consensus that I’d received from both fans and friends alike about their live performances was, to put it lightly, concerning. Still, fears of muddy mixes and lackluster delivery did little to deter us as we stepped through the Voodoo Room’s doors with hope in our hearts. Opening with “I Don’t Care,” the hour-and-a-half-long set that ensued spanned the lengths of their 2007 self-titled album and 2016’s Heaven is a Place. While I admittedly never found myself spellbound in the way much of the audience seemed to be, any anxieties I had carried in with me about their quality of performance disappeared almost immediately. The mix felt deliberate, intentional, consuming, yet never overwhelming in the way many shoegaze performances can become, where sheer volume and tinnitus overtake enjoyment altogether.
The vocals were, at times, indecipherable, but rather than detracting from the experience, that obscurity seemed to deepen it strangely. Lyrics blurred into texture, becoming less and less about the more about and more about the feelings evoked. In that sense, the performance earned itself a unique universality as listeners were free to project their own aches into the wash which emerged before them.
By the halfway mark, though, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t fatigued. Shoegaze demands a particular mood, one I simply wasn’t in that night, and over time, the uniform palette of effects began to do little more than blur together into sonic mush for me. There are only so many dynamic shifts available within that specific sonic world, and by the fifth of many four-minute ambient interludes between songs, I had begun to quietly question if they were really entirely necessary.
Still, fatigue does not negate intention entirely. What felt monotonous to me seemed to be, for much of the room, a wholly transportative experience. Couples embraced as they held each other silently and swayed gently in private communion. Even if I never fully immersed myself in the music that night, the sight of others dissolving into it felt enough. And if those walls of sound granted even a handful of listeners ninety fleeting minutes where their worries could be washed away, I think that's all that really matters.
