A Closer Listen
Belgium’s dunk!festival is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, and doing so in style. Tickets are already available for the event, taking place May 29-31; a pre-festival event took place in early March, including Godspeed You! Black Emperor, This Will Destroy You and God Is An Astronaut.
One of the greatest joys of a festival is discovering up-and-coming acts, and Din of Celestial Birds falls into this category. The Leeds, UK quintet is comprised of three guitarists, a bassist/synthesist and a drummer. We reviewed their debut album back in 2023, and the band has continued to pick up steam since then. Their live set includes four tracks from that LP and two from 2019’s EP 1.
The construction of a live set involves choices of what to present and how to sequence or re-sequence the songs. Din of Celestial Birds seems to have made every right choice, as the set is packed with energy from start to finish. An early sample speaks of everything being “boring,” but this couldn’t be further from the truth; the monster riffs of “Laureate of American Lowlife” prove the opposite to be true. The next track opens with the words, “Perhaps you’d better start from the beginning,” which is apt as “Schoolyard Sessions” was the first track on the band’s first EP, and the second, “Rose,” follows immediately after and is the album’s first single. On these tracks, one can hear how confident the band has grown in the last six years. The construction of the songs hasn’t changed, but the fluidity has greatly increased. The glockenspiel introduction of “Rose” is one of the set’s few quieter moments, and it makes a big impact in the dynamic contrast of the whole; later in the set, the same holds true for the opening halves of “MMEC” and “I Love You But It’s Killing Me.”
Our favorite Din of Celestial Birds track, “Downpour,” is back and badder than ever. We continue to hope that the band will be able to play this piece in an actual downpour; the thunderclap at the beginning (not heard in the original version) is a whole lot of fun, because this cue separates the festival fans from the newcomers. While there’s no way to make a perfect track more perfect, it does grow in energy, the band feeding off the crowd. Our only disappointment is the absence of “Junebug,” which would have been a fitting encore for a pumped-up audience.
Live albums are rare events for a band this young, but Live at dunk!fest2024 is more than just an advertisement for the upcoming event or a souvenir of the one that has passed. It’s evidence of a band that should be on the radar of every post-rock fan, as it proves that they are even more vital live than in the studio: an essential ingredient of an extended career. (Richard Allen)
Tue Mar 25 00:01:24 GMT 2025