Skating Polly at Green Door Store
It’s October which means it’s time to return to the darkside! (spooky gig reviewing). This time round, it’s a three-piece sibling rock band from Oklahoma, Skating Polly.
Skating Polly (SP) formed as a sibling duo, Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse, when they were just 9 and 14 years old respectively, before being joined by brother Kurtis Mayo. With a discography of seven EP’s/Albums, SP have accumulated around 40k monthly Spotify listeners, and have collaborated with female grunge royalty Nina Gordon and Louise Post of Veruca Salt, on the song that kicks off the whole set – Hail Mary.
Kelli emerges from out of the darkness before stepping into the mic and power kicking into action for the chorus. With a highly contagious energy, Brighton’s Green Door Store crowd unfortunately has a little trouble getting into it.
One of the most admirable factors about this band is the instrument and vocal flexibility between the three members, switching between songs. Peyton (wearing their bloody choker, appropriately) jumps onto the mic for the fourth song of the set, ‘Hickey King’, as Kelli does backing vocals.
The band’s dynamic brings an innovative take to Brighton’s rock scene, and the contrast between Kelli and Peyton’s voices in the same set, is refreshing and unique. They haven’t confined their sound to one set genre, and aren’t afraid to shake it up and cause a little chaos. Wait – is this what they mean by (self-titled) ‘Ugly Pop’?
For a band that’s been marking their scene for so many years already, they’ve illustrated a strong determination to grow and improve with each tour. Their passion is evident as they continue to introduce bigger and better ideas to their set, such as Kelli bringing out the keys on this tour for her beautifully sung ballad, ‘A Little Late’, being the first tour they’ve included keys on.
They end the set with their biggest hit, They’re Cheap (I’m Free), with Peyton on drums, Kurtis on guitar, and Kelli on her usual bass guitar and vocals – and finally, it seems as though the crowd was saving all of their energy for this moment, because things start getting big and busy!
Although the audience’s energy wasn’t quite what I was expecting (for a Sunday night!), It was just as fierceful and high-energy as I was expecting from SP, and I’ll definitely be seeing them in the future.