Blood Cultures at the Royale, 2/15

Coming back to the Royale for the first time in 2022 felt like a return to normalcy, one I wasn’t prepared for but might have needed. Witnessing an unfathomable amount of beanies and mustaches assembled in the Royale’s spacious pit on a random Tuesday night made me feel like nature might be healing after all. 

Blood Cultures hit the stage mysteriously disguised by Jack Skellington-adjacent face paint. I was warned beforehand to avoid taking photos too close, to avoid identifying the band’s anonymous frontman. Anonymity and depersonalization seem to characterize both their onstage appearance as well as the relative detachment of the band’s sometimes haunting sound. The band started off the night with “Keeps Bringing Me Back,” the first single released off their 2021 album, LUNO. The song’s incredibly catchy chorus and danceable sound got the crowd warmed up for the bizarreness to ensue. 

I came to know Blood Cultures earlier this year after discovering and subsequently becoming obsessed with their 2021 hit, “Set it on Fire.” Seeing “Set it on Fire” performed live was a unique look into the process that goes into Blood Cultures’s distinctly collaged and warm sound — and gave me a new sense of appreciation for the recorded rendition. Blood Cultures somehow touches on both a house and a more canonically indie vibe. Their sound is clearly inspired by a diverse collection of music from different genres. In late March of this year, the band released a recorded DJ set on SPIN magazine’s website featuring an assortment of music that they write has inspired their sound, ranging from SOPHIE to MF DOOM. A friend of mine likes to joke that my taste in music is just a fixation on weird little sounds. Blood Cultures gave me a collage of every weird little sound I was looking for; from interspersed clippings of recorded talking and other random soundbites to bird-call-like screeching. 

At one point, the crowd stood perplexed, watching the band raise their hands in the air to the opening chants of “When the Night Calls…” then giddily joined in as the band did a sort of synchronized arm dance before the first beat drop. “When the Night Calls…” is one example of Blood Cultures’s more electronic leanings — in stark contrast to the sound of one of my favorite songs off the new album, “Andromeda.” Another highlight of the show was an appearance from Goth Babe, the main act of the night. He joined the band to play “Driving South,” from Goth Babe’s new EP, Santa Catalina. The crowd broke out in affectionate screams of “Griff!”, short for Griffin Washburn, or the adorably mustached man behind Goth Babe. 

Blood Cultures gave us a mesmerizing and fantastically strange montage of music and sound, all with a charmingly bizarre visual performance. The band was uncannily in sync, even down to their coordinated candy corn-orange outfits. There was something Halloween-y in the air despite the fact that it was the middle of February, a month whose only spook factor is the wind chill. It was a perfectly weird performance to get the crowd excited for the Goth Babe set ahead.