Chapterhouse: Loud and Live
Words by Mickey McCarter
Photos by Nalinee Darmrong
In a lively show at Black Cat on May 17, Chapterhouse made shoegaze feel dangerous again.
The occasion was Whirlpool 35, a tour celebrating the 35th anniversary of the band’s landmark 1991 debut album, Whirlpool, performed in full. For longtime fans of the genre, the evening was less a nostalgia exercise than a reminder of how radically physical and immersive shoegaze could be when played at full volume by the people who invented much of its language.
Shoegaze has become fashionable again in recent years. Younger bands have revived the style’s blurred guitars, hazy melodies, and walls of reverb, while TikTok and streaming playlists have introduced a new audience to groups such as Slowdive, Ride, and My Bloody Valentine. But seeing Chapterhouse live underscored how different the original wave actually was. There was more velocity to it, more groove, more psychedelic chaos beneath the beauty. And so much gloriously loud guitar!
That tension sat at the heart of Whirlpool, an album that still sounds utterly futuristic 35 years after its release. While many shoegaze records drift dreamily, Chapterhouse always pushed harder. Their songs moved with the pulse of dance music and the attack of space rock, even while the guitars dissolved into waves of kaleidoscopic color. The band emerged from Reading, England, in the late 1980s and occupied a unique lane in the shoegaze explosion, balancing rave culture, psychedelic rock, and melodic dream pop in ways that later generations of indie bands would spend decades trying to replicate.
At Black Cat, those songs hit with enormous force, particularly as this show kicked off their first US tour in 16 years (aside from some New York City festival dates right beforehand).
Moving quickly into “Breather,” “Pearl,” and “Autosleeper,” the band created a sound that was almost architectural — layers of guitar stacked on top of one another until melodies seemed suspended in midair. The Black Cat’s relatively small room made the experience even more overwhelming.
Chapterhouse’s performance was muscular and loud, with drums that thundered beneath the swirl. “Pearl” in particular remains astonishing. Released in 1991, the song fused baggy dance rhythms with waves of distorted guitar in a way that still feels daring. Live, it became the emotional center of the evening, the crowd swaying as the band locked into its hypnotic groove.
On the original recording, fellow shoegaze legend Rachel Goswell provided a touch of the ethereal with her backing vocal. At Black Cat, her friend and the band’s Rachel Staggs lent her backing vocal to give the song a sense of mystery.
Watch the official music video for “Pearl” by Chapterhouse on YouTube:
“Treasure,” “Falling Down,” and “April” followed with equal confidence, proving how deep is the Whirlpool.
The band’s performance emphasized the shoegaze genre’s experimental side. The guitars were abrasive. The rhythms were thick. Feedback hung in the room like weather.
Chapterhouse retained their power in part because the band consists still of classic members — Andrew Sherriff (vocals, guitar), Stephen Patman (vocals, guitar), and Ashley Bates (drums). (Joe Light filled in for the absent Simon Rowe.) The band gave us a satisfying second set of tunes cherrypicked the rest of their ’90s output, including “Greater Power” and “Love Forever” from Blood Music, their 1993 second full-length — and final — album.
The encore, featuring “Mesmerise” and “Need (Somebody),” pushed the night into full euphoric overload. By then, Black Cat felt less like a club show and more like a communal act of self-reflection. The audience wasn’t simply revisiting an old favorite album; they were reconnecting with a moment when alternative music briefly became fascinated with texture, atmosphere, and transcendence.
Thirty-five years later, Whirlpool still lives up to its name. And for one night in Washington, Chapterhouse made it spin all over again.
Here are some photos of Chapterhouse performing live at Black Cat on May 17, 2026. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Nalinee Darmrong.
