Rosegarden Funeral Party
Bottom Of The Hill, San Francisco
April 4, 2024
Photos by Vera “Velma” Hernandez
What happens when the support band is the entire reason why you go to a show? That’s what the situation was when I saw Rosegarden Funeral Party playing at Bottom Of The Hill last week. The band has almost always toured as a headliner, with their Bay Area shows taking place in larger and larger venues since they first started touring in early 2018. Their last headlining show in San Francisco saw them playing The Kilowatt last November to a packed house, and their show at Bottom Of The Hill was no different. I’m not going to mince words. I know that Rosegarden Funeral Party was not the reason why everybody in the crowd was there. There were obvious members of the crowd there to see the headlining band (who I will talk about later). But there were rumblings before Rosegarden’s set from either regulars at their Bay Area shows and fresh faces alike that a good number of the people in the crowd were there explicitly to see the band.
Drummer Dean Adams came onstage first, sitting behind his kit and looking over the crowd. Soon after, singer/guitarist Leah Lane appeared, Juul in mouth and Jazzmaster in hand. “Hi everyone, we’re Rosegarden Funeral Party from Dallas, Texas,” she said, giving the trademark intro that she does at nearly every show. The band launched into “Doorway Ghost,” the opening song from their latest album, From The Ashes. Despite touring as just a two-piece, the backing tracks and Leah Lane’s constant moving around the stage made up for the lack of other musicians onstage. The show was the third on Rosegarden’s current tour, and despite the song being so new, the two made it sound like they had been playing it for years, much like the second song in the set, the staple “Fear Of Feeling Nothing” from their 2020 EP At The Stake.
The last time that I toured with Rosegarden Funeral Party was in the winter of 2022, when the band was touring in support of their second album In The Wake Of Fire. Despite the album being so new at the time, a good portion of that tour’s setlist was dedicated to older songs. The band’s set at Bottom Of The Hill was the complete opposite: over half of the set was full of songs from the band’s new album, an album with songs that Leah Lane had told me she wasn’t sure would fully translate live. Let me tell you, as someone who has seen the band upwards of fifty times: they sound perfect live, with “Wait Until Morning” especially sounding like it’s destined to become a staple in the band’s setlists going forward.
A special mention has to be given to Dean Adams. Throughout most of my time seeing Rosegarden Funeral Party, it was with their previous drummer Dylan Stamas. It wouldn’t be fair to compare the two, because they both come from completely different schools of drumming, with Stamas having been more traditionally post-punk in his approach to the drums. Dean Adams seemingly comes from a more jazz-oriented background, and with that he’s able to inject a sense of freshness into songs like “Ill And Getting Worse” that fans have seen many times before. And then of course there are the new songs: Adams’ playing on slower cuts like “Love Like Goodbye” especially show how adept and intuitive his playing is.
Towards the end of the band’s extended opening set, Leah mentioned that they had asked fans on their Instagram for any requests, and the next three songs had been chosen by the fans. Up first was “Chaos.” Despite it having been on the album In The Wake Of Fire, this was my first time ever having seen them play it in-person, and it made me wonder why Leah had kept it absent from the band’s sets for so long, the song reaching a fever pitch before coming to an end. Next was the live debut of “Like The Rain.” I won’t lie: there are more than a few songs by Rosegarden Funeral Party that bring a tear to my eye. But “Like The Rain” left me speechless once the band was done with it. My favorite song on From The Ashes by a long shot, the song hits home, burying a knife in your heart and twisting it. Simply put: it’s beautiful. The last song from the requests was “Ghost Of You,” another one of my favorite songs by the group. “If this is goodbye, I’ve got some things to get off my mind,” Leah sang in the choruses before crying out over and over once the song reached its emotional peak, “I’m happy that I knew you.” It’s yet another song that should be played more often by the band.
The set closed with “From The Ashes,” the title track from their new album. The largest-sounding song on the record, the chorus is another massive sing-along like most of the great Rosegarden songs have. “From this day forward, no one will ever hurt you again!” Leah sang as Dean drove the song forward with extended drum fills. The band worked the audience more and more into a frenzy, Leah’s cries of “Hallelujah!” being screamed back at her by the audience, until, at the drop of a hat, the song ended abruptly. Silence fell, only to be broken by a huge cheer from the crowd. I know that the Bay Area has always loved Rosegarden Funeral Party, and boy did they get the respect and attention that they deserved. Hallelujah.
Headlining the evening was the Los Angeles synth pop/electro pop duo Night Club. Comprised of singer Emily Kavanaugh and instrumentalist Mark Brooks, the two came onstage to a giant cheer from the audience before playing a set that mostly focused on their new album Masochist. Songs like “Pretty Girls Do Ugly Things” and “Candy Coated Suicide” got a big reaction from the band’s faithful fans, but I couldn’t fully get on board with their songs. I personally feel like, had the band reached their current stride around fourteen years ago, they would have fit in perfectly on Metropolis Records, touring with bands like Combichrist or Mindless Self Indulgence. As it is though, I found the band’s set to be too monotonous for my liking, with not enough variation to make their headlining set stand out.
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