A frenzied air is compressing on Oxford street the night of Chanel Beads’ debut Sydney show as part of Vivid Sydney. The line to the door of Oxford Arts Factory stretches as far as I can see, and sirens wail against the shouts of frantic security chants: “IDs out! Venue’s at capacity! No one else in unless you have tickets.” It feels like the aggregate NAS alumni from 2012 to present day has descended on the venue for the night.
This is the second show of Chanel Beads’ inaugural Australian tour. It’s sold out and heaving with devoted fans, all crammed wall-to-wall in the venue. The crowd is full of hoodies, bed-hair and baggy jeans – variations of frontman Shane Lavers’ signature look. The room, equal parts riotous and monastic, is unified by fever-pitch intrigue. Everyone wants to be face-to-face with the enigmatic NYC-based musicians.
Chanel Beads is primarily the musical project of Lavers, but its sound is also essentialised by vocalist Maya McGrory and violinist Zachary Paul, who all take the stage together.
Through a haze of smoke and white light, the three figures appear as silhouettes; almost an apparition, if not for their resolute presence. The optics chime with Chanel Beads’ visual world, where press stills and music videos depict figures washed by exposed light, cloaked by shadow, or blurred through grainy frames.
The show opens with an instrumental sequence, before Lavers’ serrated, hypnotic voice refracts through the space. The music swirls and the crowd chants along in echoed monotone. Arms flail and eyes lock to the stage.
The set plays like a resolved whole, the edge of each track blurring into the next. It lilts between the band’s 2024 album Your Day Will Come, and injections of the unreleased forthcoming album of the same name. The cult singles that precede the albums: Ef, True Altruism and The Coward Forgets His Nightmare are woven between. These tracks are the foundation, both of the show and of the warped, tracing sound that defines Chanel Beads.
It seems, both live and in streaming playback, like Lavers is invoking some distant space, reckoning with the disappeared past. The layers of folky guitar and celestial strings – even the music’s digital tropes: robotic vocal clips and sonic lasers – feel nostalgic and reaching.
Perhaps that’s why the show transpires like more of a communion than a concert. Shoulder-to-shoulder everyone is grasping at the same things that Lavers is: memory, loss and the polarities of being alive today, where nihilism, hope and love contend with the other. As one room we wonder if the path forward is the right one, but at some point, decide to lose ourselves to the mystery.
