Photo Gallery: Dandy Warhols + Black Angels + Queen Kwong @ The Vogue Theatre – October 19th 2023

A pretty full house tonight at the Vogue theatre for this dreamy, fuzzy triple-bill. Opening the night was Queen Kwong, playing solo over some backing tracks and adding her guitar and synth to the mix and channeling a bit of Karen O. Following that short set, the Black Angels took the stage, who seemed to have the majority of the support in the room tonight. Their hour-long set cruised through some definite crowd-favourites and the people were rapt. The lighting was moody and largely either from projected video or intensely-flashing strobes, a condition that would continue through the Dandy Warhols’ set. As we waited for the Dandy Warhols set to commence, the media pit suddenly had acquired at least one member of the Black Angels, sat with a couple of drinks and ready to watch up front.

Their set too was a journey through classic Dandys tunes, with only one new song in the middle of the set that was actually pointed out by them, almost as an afterthought. As they always have, they rejigged the setlist as they went through the night, and keyboardist Zia McCabe seems to be the one that is mainly in charge here. At one point, lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor hesitated beginning his part of the song while watching Zia’s cues before announcing, “Gotcha, I know what song we’re playing…” He also seemed to like the venue, being the first show they have done in Vancouver at the Vogue. Otherwise, they were pretty conversationally quiet between songs. The audience pointed out once that Zia’s vocals were too quiet (to be fair, vocals overall seemed really muddy, but that is likely by psychedelic design), to which she responded, “You can’t hear me? I’m a shy singer.” Even so, she ended the set solo, after the other band members had left the stage one by one and she remained behind her array of keyboards booping away, and finally fully completing the night with the Daisy song she has sung to end the shows for the last 20+ years. No encore for either headliner tonight, and that was that. 

Photos © Andy Scheffler