Clare Dodd enjoys a night of unpretentious art-punk culture courtesy of Sauna Youth

  • Sauna Youth
  • Modern Art Oxford
  • 9 October 2015

Pretention was the last thing you could accuse art-punk band Sauna Youth of, as they ripped through their set at Modern Art Oxford, barely stopping to look at, let alone talk to, the lively, punk-drunk crowd.

With no leather, no safety pins and certainly no leaping around the stage, frontwoman and keyboardist, Jen Calleja held our attention with her cold stare and sturdy voice while the rest of the band, shadowed by the imposing pillars of the gallery’s cellar, created a wall of polished punk that you absolutely could not argue with.

The band’s sound is too neat to be pure punk though. Yes it’s fast and it’s hard but, unlike the riot-rousing punk of the 70s, it exists only temporarily. You are held, rapt, for the whole of their 30-minute set, but then thrown quietly back into the un-shattered night. Nothing has actually changed.

But perhaps that is the point.

This divergence from ‘the punk that was’ stems in part from a difference in subject matter. Clash Magazine described Sauna Youth’s latest album, Distractions, as "the sound of a disillusioned and discontented generation".

There isn’t any hope or revolution in their music, just anger and frustration at the shattered dreams of a generation who entered the real world just as the economy crashed. If you’re careening towards 30 you’ll understand.

That’s not to say they don’t speak to a wider, punk-loving audience. Yes the twenty-something’s dominated on Friday but they weren’t given free reign in their energetic break from their (comparatively short-lived) monotony.

And Sauna Youth certainly provide that: a brief but invigorating opportunity to let go.

Songs like ‘Try to Leave’ and ‘Modern Living’, gave us exactly the opposite of the dead-eyed slog that their lyrics describe thanks to tight, fast guitar lines (so fast that at times, Lindsay Corstorphine’s hand was quite literally a blur), relentless, rapid drumming and perfectly discordant vocals from Calleja and drummer Rich Phoenix.

A single, striking interlude came with the track ‘(Taking A) Walk’. With the vocal landscape to herself, Calleja softly spoke her dystopian prose over a muted accompaniment that seemed to follow her like the suspicious stranger in her lyrics; a fitting deviation from the hard grip the band otherwise held on the crowd.

Sauna Youth, an art-punk band made up of four individuals, each of whom play in multiple bands and contribute to artistic collectives and creative publications are much more than their seemingly-hipster description implies.

Sauna Youth want to express something; they have things to say. But they don’t care about anyone agreeing with them. They stepped up to their podium, confronted us with their piece, then left.

And it worked.