SHOW REVIEW: Duster
Photo courtesy of Dan, @scum.st on Instagram.
EMO’S AUSTIN | AUSTIN, TX | NOVEMBER 7, 2024 | BY RACHEL JOY THOMAS
Duster, the now-famous shoegaze-laden band from the late ‘90s, made a stunning return in 2019 with its self-titled album, maxing out on a revival in slowgaze culture. Suddenly popularized by fan interest on social media, the once overlooked lo-fi trio gained a surge of notoriety for its 2019 re-debut and previous albums. Surfacing as a lowkey influence haunting the 2020s, the space-rock group eventually recorded two more albums in subsequent years, with recent keystone In Dreams causing the band to step foot in Austin on Nov. 7th, 2024 for a performance at Emo's Austin.
At Emo’s, a sizable crowd formed, just barely growing past the front-of-house, with a few passerbys sticking close to the venue’s walls. Attendees eagerly waited for Duster to come on stage, walking around the roomy venue with an air of general satisfaction. Meandering toward the venue’s edges for places to sit down, some fans pressed against soundproofing walls or wandered toward the merch table, where a twisting line curled around the venue’s columns and core architecture.
Dirty Art Club opened with a beat-laden, sensational DJ set starting at 8:11 p.m.. Fashionably late, the North Carolina native wordlessly played out rain-soaked melodies and atmospheric, impressionistic loops for a growing crowd of Duster-clad t-shirt wearers. Despite many fans seeming completely unfamiliar with the artist, retro synth keyboards and cosmic, soothing rhythms combined with interesting analog motifs made for a great segue.
As red lights bloomed against the ceiling’s avant garde structures, Duster took to the stage. Starting off the night at 9:15 p.m., the trio of Clay Parton (multi-instrumental), Canaan Dove Amber (multi-instrumental) and Jason Albertini (drums, multi-instrumental) jumped into “The Twins / Romantica,” a track from their 1998 album Stratosphere. The simple instrumental, highlighted by Albertini playing occasional crashing cymbals, smoothly trickled and flowed like a transcendental waterfall toward the crowd.
Indeed, tracks like “Twins / Romantica” pulled listeners into a trance. Fans rarely pulled out their phones to imbue the band with flash or the glow of their cameras. Instead, those who waited at the barricade often stood soundless, staring up at Duster in a trance as tender, faint vocals slipped into their ears. Beautiful blue and yellow lights bathed concert attendees as they remained entirely transfixed.
Notes of “Chocolate and Mint,” the group’s most famous cut since its revitalization, chucked from Dove Amber’s Gibson Flying V with ease during a quick soundcheck. Fans perked up, recognizing the track immediately and giving quiet cheers. Then, the track started, dissonantly tumbling into the crowd. Parton’s pained refrain, matching the discordant but apt fuzzy rhythm guitar, swept through the venue. Fuzzy synths buzzed above basslines before quietly ebbing away to make room for Parton’s subdued warble: “Can't get the taste to fade / Haunting wild / Want to feel it in your bones / Just take this chocolate and mint,” ominously closing out the track.
Duster remained quiet and refrained throughout its set; The trio barely spoke to the crowd, but the brevity of appreciation from occasional thank yous uplifted audience members. Unconstrained by typical expectations, the band felt no need to exaggerate its touching, drifting reverb. Rather, occasional glimpses of harder dynamics– for tracks like “Diamond” and “Orbitron” especially– gave brevity to the group’s delicate harmonics.
Cheers erupted when the devastating song, “Me and The Birds” chimed toward the spectators as echoey guitar chucks rumbled the floor. Like a cry, the track wept with the same devastation that underlies much of Duster’s discography. But unlike other tracks, “Me and The Birds,” articulated like a sore wound rather than a faint one. The deeply melancholic song cut and festered estrangement with every biting, shrill call of the instrumental.
The last song of the night whispered into the venue before uprooting into a slowgaze roar. “Echo, Bravo,” another cut from Stratosphere, suddenly picked up in energy. Concert attendees stood on ADA seating to peer at the band’s performance and to bask in gleaming white lights as the group regurgitated its last, wailing tune for the night.
As the track reverberated and spilled out into the crowd for its last notes, the audience waited. Even as the slowgazing trio stepped off the stage, the lights turned on in the venue, and pre-recorded tracks melted into the speakers, some crowd members stood helplessly. One confused man shouted, “encore?” before realizing the band wouldn’t return for one, having left in a cool, nonchalant fashion. The concert ended there, despite misgivings from the crowd regarding the existence of another swan song.
Duster played a professional and collected set that felt perfectly decompressing. Parton’s wispy vocals, combined with soft synth overlays, swarming guitars and extended crashing cymbals, briskly invited Austin to a new world.
The only negative of attending a Duster concert echoes in the words of Stereogum writer Ian Cohen: “they actively teeter on the edge of tedium.” The almost dissociative body of work with similar rhythm guitar riffs and spacey interludes amassed by the trio can inundate bouts of melancholy, but the band does so with such a gravitational pull that it almost becomes a moot point. Dissociation morphs into self-reflection and then eventual reprieve. Almost meditative, the similarity in each song starts to feel like breathing- a natural, necessary need for the body. In other words, that inkling toward ‘tedium,’ crawls inside a listener and imbeds them with a sense of internal transformation. Duster’s Nov 7th, concert in Austin proved as much.