Chowder & Train Station Gigs

“Going to see a gig in Edge Hill station later,” I told a friend in an attempt to exert my cool. Metal Liverpool was the venue. Usually an artist studio and creative space, Metal lives inside a building on the platform of Edge Hill train station, the penultimate stop before Lime Street. This gig was somewhat of a reopening for Metal – having, I’d been told, just repaired their central heating. At the same time, this event marked the next step for a Liverpool experimental scene tradition – intimate house gigs complete with a meal – and its foray into the public arena.

B.Y.O.B. and greetings at the door with vegan chowder and a bread roll, this gig shows very possible a new format of night-out: one in which attendees eat, drink, and dance together in the same venue and on the same ticket (a kindly requested £10, with no one turned away due to lack of funds). Not the layout of a restaurant, the vibe here is hot food aside a proverbial campfire, a setup by which people can cluster or mingle at their leisure.

On to the music. Jerboa opens, a new outfit from Liverpool merging grungy rock with sprinklings of country and a saxophonist (consider me hooked). They tease a new song – their best yet. Still finding their feet and seemingly timid, the band are at their best when at their loudest and during their extended instrumental sections. Definitely one to watch.

Trains whizz by as the set continues, a humorous reminder that we are indeed still sat on the main train route into the city. A thing made all the more funny when a teenage couple wanders in looking for the station’s public toilet. “What the fuck was that?” laughs one after meandering about the rail-network-adjacent venue.

Ann Bukla is next, and something of a tone change from Jerboa. There is little humour here, but what is lost in accessibility – and an uncomfortable lack of applause – is more than made up in technical ability and sheer performance. Red light glows behind a barefoot Bukla making easy work of a drum kit transformed by digital sensors and pads. Whirling and unpredictable drum rhythms are accompanied by synth samples. Syncopation is king. 

The final act, Ursa Major Moving Group, is the best of the night and sees the austere technical power of Bukla’s drumming soothed by the emotive vocals and gripping guitar melodies of Ursula Russell. This is the best live music I’ve seen in yonks.

Throughout the night, amid glances out the window to people on their commute home, I had a feeling that what had been done in that train station that Friday not only proposed a model by which Metal could be used regularly as a venue – particularly in an area of Liverpool in dire need of edgy gig spots – but also one from which all gigs could learn. A model in which gig-goers don’t simply empty their pockets in aid of £5 Red Stripes and dance mindlessly to cover bands, but bond over a meal as part of a wider community. As we enter the latest in a long line of recurring recessions, it cannot be overstated how valuable the pillars of communal eating and listening are for a community to thrive. If nothing else, knowing you’ll get fed is surely a good enough reason to leave the house.

Pete Mercer