Live music review – A Giant Dog reopened Hotel Vegas patio with a bang
Merge Records’ recording artists, A Giant Dog made a triumphant return to the Hotel Vegas patio last night with a sold-out, typically raucous garage-punk rock performance that ignited an already hyped audience. Those same fans had just witnessed equally stellar performances by openers, Dregs and Vegas stalwarts, Pleasure Venom.
It was a night for the ages that felt as though we really had come full circle after the world wide pandemic essentially forced an over 18-month hiatus on the live music industry in Austin and around the world. The evening felt cathartic, euphoric and just plain, good, old Texas fun. The kind of fun that, frankly had been missing from our lives for far too long.
Apart from seeing tons of friends in the audience (Spoon’s Britt Daniel was in attendance), our favorite pre-show moment was getting a huge hug from A Giant Dog’s lead guitarist, Andrew Cashen after not seeing the affable axe-man for so long. We hugged as friends then chatted briefly as professionals. Cashen let us know that, “We wanted to wait to come back until we could do it like this.” After that incendiary set, it’s hard to argue with that sentiment. AGD gave us what we wanted… a real rock show complete with sweaty, happy faces moshing together in front of the stage like maniacs.
While the set was electric from the start, A Giant Dog’s front woman, Sabrina Ellis seemed to kick it into a higher gear with “I’ll Come Crashing” from AGD’s seminal 2016 album, Pile. Still wearing a blue vertical striped men’s shirt over her tank top and jeans, Ellis writhed on stage as though she’d been electrocuted, shocked and involuntarily moved by the music blasting out behind her, into the frenzy of fans, going for it as hard as they could. This particular moment would never happen again. It was glorious.
Cashen was no less animated, playing his guitar behind his head, then perched atop an amplifier and generally rocking the fuck out. With his new, short hair cut and whited out overalls getup he looked equally at home on the big stage while his people prayed to the church of the holy guitar solo.
Drummer, Danny Lion was observed nervously smoking cigarettes prior to the set but all that angst and anticipation must have washed away with the first notes of the show for the red-headed percussionist. His furious tom drum beat intro to an early set list track gave us The Who feels.
Following “I’ll Come Crashing” Cashen stepped to the mic to mention, “A guy with a Swedish accent keeps yelling, play something faster. This one is for you dude.” Then promptly launched into AGD hit, “Sex and Drugs.” That was the cue for Ellis to reveal her black, sheer, tank top underneath her men’s button-up with Texas stars over her breasts. It was a rock star move on a sweltering evening. We didn’t care if we were sweaty and hot. We were with our friends rocking out and that’s all that mattered. Everything was perfect.
