Staring Problem

  Staring Problem played Hideout Tuesday 30 December with Astrobrite, Scott Cortez band with Sophie from Videotape. I've seen a lot. I've seen the changing variations of Lauren's hair. I remember the one show Lauren had on this cool ass Violator Depeche Mode T-shirt. The memories of seeing them woven together with other significant moments. Like the one time saw SP and hung around an old friend that introduced me to Whitby. At times Staring Problem can remind me of New Model Army with the jangly bass. Or maybe that's how I identify that street-wise sounding element in their music. They sound so casual and easy around the depressing grey. Its not saying they are depressing. They just seem to evoke the same landscape as say Sisters of Mercy. Its what they do on that landscape once conjured in the mind. They got the sound to compel one to move. I would liken them further to a chill Sisters Of Mercy but their songs are too damn short while Sisters...I can use a few less repetitious verses, or trim two fucking minutes from somewhere.
  So, in Staring Problem I found elements of those two bands......yeah day two of my shoegaze detox. No, not really.....but no fog, I can see more clearly......One day at a time, anyway. And those are not local bands, but they are iconic bands.....Sisters and NMA. We know them in this modernity for the mediums we hold them in. We heard them on CDs we bought at record stores or if we were lucky at the merch tables of live shows. Staring Problem is local. We can see them in the small venues as well as hold their Vinyl and wear the shirt. And now that I've said that....they do have new shirts to want.
  I've been wanting to see them. I know the drummer had this trip abroad she had to do. I felt profoundly changed when I went to Guanajuato to study spanish. I came back changed by the dreams I had from studying magical realism/Mexican history. So I recall slowing down and thinking I'm seeing her on the cusp of this trip to one of the origins of magical realism. There is something so punk about SP that calling them specifically goth is kind of misleading. No shoegaze smog means a cleaner sound, and I'm not taking the piss out of shoegaze. No fuzzy guitars means I can hear the jangly bass that is the forward driving engine. OK, so obvious, heavy goth dark sound, but do not ignore the dirty punk leanings. Ignore the goths.....fine, their like cats. They'll go find a corner of the house that is their own.  And yet that is not always the crowd you see in an actual show when I'm in it.  The punk is what resists a uniform. Rejects a fashion.
  I've often observed the audience for SP. Its not all that goth heavy like say a Spiritual Bat show where people go out of their way to dress up for a death rock night. I barely had enough to get me into The Hideout. But I get in and catch what I can of them and then Astrobrite! The drummer is back from her travels in South America. Having done study abroad I know how life-changing that can be, what it does to your sense of identity. Me having spent a summer in the city of Guanajuato, Mexico, when singing rock in your own native spanish meant something. I felt profoundly changed, full of stories to tell as a writer.....yeah. It was after Guanajuato that I tried to wear that name....writer, because I had stories to tell, and briefly I felt the one to tell them. The last time I saw Staring Problem I believe it was just before she went to Chile I believe, and now I see them here at Hideout after coming back. I did not ask for not wanting to intrude. So I found myself drifting into recalling my day to day living in GTO. Its night life, its preserved oldness. I believe I did take pictures of the band but not this time 30 December. I was happy to just see them, and stayed to see Scott and Sophie.
Zig