Photo Credit: Anthony Purcella
Ruckus. A noisy fight or a disturbance to normality. A row or commotion caused because of a dispute or argument, creating a ruckus. For Orange County, CA’s Movements, that’s the levels of carnage and chaos they caused down at The Underworld. Warming up for their slot at Slam Dunk Festival, with old school post-hardcore Movements songs about visceral heartbreak and mental health struggles to new singles taken from upcoming album RUCKUS!, a record created to cause a stir and hear Movements in their prime age of sophistication, sleek, suave and sexy baselines coming off as angsty and aggressive in the most delicious and delectable way possible.
And it’s that post hardcore grit with sensual shoe-gaze pop groves that make the rowdy and ruckus crowd that ram into The Underworld for a sold-out Movements show one of, “The best show we have played in London by far” and one of, “The best shows we have been to by far.” Let the unhinged and feral behaviour of 500 fans be unleashed, starting with Movements’ set opener Third Degree.
Whilst the track might be taken from the band’s debut album Feel Something, there was no encouragement needed for the crowd to feel something. “But I wanna keep you/Keep you close to me/So I can feel you/Be my third degree” sings frontman Patrick Miranda, swaying side to side whilst demanding the crowd “Bounce, bounce, bounce!” along to the chorus’s sickly sweet secret satisfaction felt with being the used submissive in a romantic setting. Where Miranda sways his hips, one guy swings off The Underworld’s balcony to the bodies below bouncing, The Underworld felt like a room spinning when you are drunk and it seemed to never stop until the band stepped off stage after finishing off their set with Daylily and Suffer Through, taking the no encore approach to their shows like their fellow post hardcore friends in PUP, Pat stating “We have two more songs left for you, but we are not doing encores. They are lame. What are we going to do, we are going to walk off stage for 90 seconds and wait, what’s the point?”
Even though they have only been out for a short period of time, new songs Killing Time and Lead Pipe taken from yet to be released album RUCKUS! receive their live debuts. Despite their dark lyrical undertones of an addictive relationship and a dark and sinister past coming back to haunt you respectively, they subsequently spark mass dance and singalongs, so much so Miranda remarks, “That might be the best reaction to performing a song for the first time we have ever had.”
Perhaps though it was Movements’ stream of older material taken from Feel Something and No Good Left To Give and even the band’s first EP Outgrown Things that gets the energy raised to even larger degrees. “The energy in here is hot, it’s sweaty, it’s wild. I’m feeling a little jet lagged, but I’m feeling weird and I need you to get weird with me,” promises Miranda, that hot, sweaty and wild energy rolling into songs such as the sultry Skin To Skin, the sing-along Seneca or the emotional Colourblind, Miranda’s demands for weirdness clearly not having been met yet, as he asks the crowd “It’s been a while since we’ve been back, but I seem to remember London shows getting crazy am I right? That’s no means to say you have been a bad crowd up until this point, but you’ve been a seven and I need you to be a 9.8. Is it going to take an old song to do that?” before throwing a spanner in the works, performing first EP track Kept.
Whilst Movements might be known for their heart wrenching songs drenched in pity and sorrow at failed moments in life, the Movements on display here down at The Underworld is renewed, refreshed and taking a fun-loving look at their life and it’s that don’t care attitude that pays off tonight to ruckus levels of energy and enthusiasm. 10/10
Written By: Katie Conway-Flood
