CAROLINE + NINA GARCIA – CHALK, BRIGHTON 17.2.26
In 2017, Casper Hughes and Jasper Llewellyn embarked on a rite of passage for any University of Manchester student: starting a band. Instead of the usual four-chord Oasis aping, it was treated like a sonic seminar: improvisational collagic sessions, an exchange of musical ideas. Post-graduation, this didn’t stop; Caroline (stylized in lower case) was born and only grew bigger. Initially a trio with Mike O’Malley, they slowly became their current eight-strong collective by adding Oliver Hamilton, Magdalena McLean, Freddy Wordsworth, Alex McKenzie, and Hugh Aynsley. The group are a veritable orchestra pursuing post-rock experimentalism, intent on pushing recording conventions and listener comfort to their limits – like a more melodically inclined Einstürzende Neubauten.
Arriving at a sold-out Chalk (courtesy of Love Thy Neighbour promoters), and fresh from the near-universally acclaimed sophomore record ‘Caroline2’, the collective seeks to showcase this expansion from ambient midwestern emo tendencies to further sonic exploration in bizarre time signatures. Caroline are a thoroughly incomparable act intent on maintaining that status on this tour; a far cry from the house shows that got them signed.
Our headliner’s ethos of sound over ego or imitation is reflected in tonight’s support, Nina Garcia. Garcia is a Paris-based guitarist, eschewing expectations of contemporary musicians in favour of Suzanne Ciani-adjacent sound artistry. Her self-proclaimed “noise guitar” focuses on the walls of sound that can be created with an electric guitar, two pedals, and strategically placed microphones to capture every nuance. 2025 debut album ‘Bye Bye Bird’ is as technically precise as Joe Harvey Whyte & Bobby Lee, while continuing the 80s noise experiments of Sonic Youth.
Amidst a cluttered stage set resembling a premium jumble sale for Caroline’s octet, Nina Garcia looks comparatively sparse. Armed with just an electric guitar and two pedals, she seeks to win over a scattered early crowd smattered with beanies and overgrown hair; even greeting a dedicated front row with a smile and “Hi.”
The opening notes of ‘Bye Bye Bird’ apocalyptically rumble in like pitch-black clouds, only broken by the clink of bottles from the bar and the oddly rhythmic beat of the push door slamming shut. Following cut ‘Le Leurre’ feels like an alarm; a dissonant warning of stabs to the ear, like developing Stockholm syndrome for an oddly satisfying car alarm.
After a small thank you and an announcement, tonight’s set is from debut album ‘Bye Bye Bird’, the tenderness of ‘Ballade des Souffles’ sets up ‘Pick-Up Tentative’ to attack your eardrums. While the prior tracks have threatened a storm, ‘Pick-Up Tentative’ showcases its destruction, with Garcia furiously scrubbing the fretboard with what seems to be a headphone jack. It sounds like angry TV static, or the guttural sounds of a metal factory trying its best to sing. Anyone walking in during ‘Pick-Up Tentative’ without the prior warmup of tracks or knowledge of Nina Garcia would assume they’d walked into a sound check.
From this point, the tracks from ‘Bye Bye Bird’ are practically indiscernible from the impromptu tangents from Garcia between songs, melting the final act of her support slot into one, at times demanding a lot from a casual concertgoer. However, there is something hugely captivating in the commitment to utilising every part of a guitar for passages of sound that are so dense you don’t even realise how full your ears are until they’re finished. The audience is in complete silence, no overlapping conversations, while waiting for what Garcia will do next. While deep in flow, she clambers around the stage holding her guitar to different speakers and amps to hunt down any trace of sound, even circling the head of the guitar’s neck along the ground like a sonic metal detector.
While effectively 40 minutes of noise, feedback and squealing, Nina Garcia is shockingly effective at keeping audience attention. Her set is only interrupted due to the unavoidable noises of tonight’s venue, a club, with the clinking of bottles from behind the bar the only hindrance. Its sonic exploration serves as both a precursor and a warning for what’s to come with Caroline. If Garcia can make this much noise in Chalk by herself, Caroline might genuinely bring the entire building down.
Nina Garcia:
Nina Garcia – vocals, guitar
Nina Garcia setlist:
‘Bye Bye Bird’ (from ‘Bye Bye Bird’ album)
‘Le Leurre’ (from ‘Bye Bye Bird’ album)
‘Ballade des Souffles’ (from ‘Bye Bye Bird’ album)
‘Pick-Up Tentative’ (from ‘Bye Bye Bird’ album)
‘Dans L’alios’ (from ‘Bye Bye Bird’ album)
‘Whistling Memories’ (from ‘Bye Bye Bird’ album)
‘Harsh Hopping’ (from ‘Bye Bye Bird’ album)
www.muraillesmusic.com/artistes/nina-garcia
A semi-circle stage approach with an amp in the middle is unveiled for Caroline, once Garcia’s minimal equipment is cleared. Despite Casper and Jasper starting the project, their layout speaks to the irreplaceability of their fellow 6 members and the importance of their democratic synergy.
The backstage of Chalk acts as Pandora’s box as the octet of Caroline steadily floods onto the stage, with their first act placing a snare drum by an amp and letting the sound bask through the room. Opener ‘Song Two’ – an antithesis to the parodic “Woohoos” of Blur – is utterly mesmerising. It’s a surgically crafted musical organism, with each cobbled texture colliding in a song sliced by shuddering, bone-splitting violin. The deconstructivist approach is followed by ‘U R UR ONLY ACHING.’ While autotuned to an inch of interpretation, it meticulously shudders and breathes from its ambiently Jacob-Alon-esque folk intro to its bold crescendos where both sides of the stage start their war for sound supremacy.
The duelling continues, with Hamilton and McLean’s violins fighting from opposite ends of the stage, segueing into the deep pulsation of ‘Dark Blue’. If this collective is one organism, we can finally hear its pulse. Every member moves violently, playing significantly louder live, to the extent it feels like a war is going on outside with how much the room shakes. While apprehensive violins shriek of the horrors outside, guitars reverb and drone. It doesn’t matter if anything’s happened out there; we’re here for at least another 45 minutes.
Rip-roaring cheers echo through Chalk, bookending ‘Dark Blue’. The sound of an audience completely enthralled within three songs. The silence left by applause is deafening, until ‘When I Get Home’ gradually fills it. Pulsating club sounds are drowned in the background, in what feels like intruding on a private moment, a moment of private solace at a house party you’re far too drunk for.
“Should we play it?” Caroline teases before the highly autotuned ‘Tell Me I Never Knew That’ is aired, with unfortunately no surprise turn from Caroline Polachek. While it started as minimalist Appalachian folk, the composition unfurls into a shimmering ballad of repetition that does somewhat feel the absence of Polachek’s inimitable vocal range. It is immediately followed by the droning intro of ‘Beautiful Ending’ with modulated vocal effects, making Casper seem like a man possessed.
Debut album cut ‘Skydiving Onto The Library Roof’ fittingly feels like falling from a great height, with panicked strings staccatoing and the drums going haywire the closer you get to the ground. However, its pulse remains constant – like the sky staying a calm blue, forcing acceptance from falling panic. This precariousness is followed by the earth-shattering grief of ‘Two Riders Down.’ It seemingly abandons traditional music theory as reverbed guitar fights with folk-style violins, continuously metamorphosing its darting speed and downstrummed stabs into vast walls of noise, constructing an emphatically cacophonous conclusion. For much of this intensity, it seems like Casper is fully breaking down onstage; his intensely modulated voice bellowing into the void of a post-rock crescendo as a pure expression of pain.
The intensity of the prior two tracks is softened with the live experimentation of ‘Coldplay Cover.’ Introduced in a speech from Casper Hughes about the album’s stitching of two tracks together from different rooms, the recording process is mimicked live by Magdalena moving between each side of a reconfigured stage to capture both sides of the bisected track in real-time. An acoustic guitar drives three-part harmonies from one side, whilst the other is adorned by clarinet, guitar, and banjo. “You never really get that far” seems to be the unifying cry of a track that never truly relinquishes control to the other side, but allows itself to be toned down to share focus. It feels strangely adjacent to Rosalía’s sonic three-act approach on ‘Berghain’ yet drops the scale down to kitchen-sink intimacy. By the end of the track, most of the audience finally exhales: their focus held so closely by a band, it has nearly stolen their breath.
Stage lights go red for debut album cut ‘Good Morning (Red)’ – a track about canvassing for Corbyn’s 2017 Labour Party. Vocals seem external, like they’re shouted in from a hallway – allowing the closest thing to a singalong with “Can I be happy; in this world”. Violins clash with tapped guitar notes, before leaving Hugh Aynsley playing a standard measure. Casper and Oliver Hamilton sit down and watch their bandmates shine, trusting they have a handle on the cultivated eruption.
Closer ‘Total Euphoria’ is an encapsulation of Caroline’s Frankenstein approach. Downstrummed guitars are offbeat to snare-heavy drums, as everything seems to be in a state of syncopated disarray. On paper, this composition should be a headache, but somehow, total dissonance is prevented on a track borne from years of painstakingly improvised sessions together. Casper and Magdalena duel for audience attention from opposite sides of the stage for a final time with “Did we ever talk about it” harmonising, and punctuating a jumble of songs upcycled into one. A final dense block of sound with every member making as much noise as possible provides one last safety inspection for the building, knocking loose bits of confetti from bigger budget tours out of every nook of Chalk.
Throughout tonight, there is a constant feel of spontaneity while remaining tight enough to never miss a beat; their chemistry is so strong, it feels like every musician has been duplicated. Each song is carefully crafted on unstable foundations, like a sonic allegory of the house built on sand. It is utter dynamism on display, in which the spaces between songs and notes are just as important as what’s being played. You could watch this exact show hundreds of times and still not catch every inflection or slight nuance of performance. It completely transcends a typical tour run-through of an album to become a new beast entirely, one that is practically impossible to review with any semblance of justice to just how impressive they are live. Their emotive post-rock grips attention and controls when their audience breathes – providing everything Black Country New Road promised on Ants From Up There. Tonight’s show cements Caroline’s status as one of the most inimitable, interesting and important working bands on the planet!
Caroline:
Casper Hughes – guitar, vocals
Jasper Llewellyn – cello, drums, vocals, guitar
Mike O’Malley – guitar, bass, vocals, keyboards, cello, percussion
Oliver Hamilton – violin, vocals
Magdalena McLean – violin, vocals
Freddy Wordsworth – trumpet, trombone, bass, vocals
Alex McKenzie – clarinet, saxophone, flute, vocals
Hugh Aynsley – drums, percussion
Caroline setlist:
‘Song Two’ (from 2025 ‘Caroline2’ album)
‘U R UR ONLY ACHING’ (from 2025 ‘Caroline2’ album)
‘Dark Blue’ (from 2022 ‘Caroline’ album)
‘When I Get Home’ (from 2025 ‘Caroline2’ album)
‘Tell Me I Never Knew That’ (from 2025 ‘Caroline2’ album)
‘Beautiful Ending’ (from 2025 ‘Caroline2’ album)
‘Skydiving Onto The Library Roof’ (from 2022 ‘Caroline’ album)
‘Two Riders Down’ (from 2025 ‘Caroline2’ album)
‘Coldplay Cover’ (from 2025 ‘Caroline2’ album)
‘Good Morning (Red)’ (from 2022 ‘Caroline’ album)
‘Total Euphoria’ (from 2025 ‘Caroline2’ album)
