Rain Parade last appeared here in March 2023. That night they were supporting fellow Californians and Paisley Underground legends The Dream Syndicate and performed as an acoustic duo comprising the band’s co-founders, Matt Piucci and Steven Roback. This time round the two former college roommates are augmented by long-time fellow guitarist John Thoman who had originally joined the band in 1985, four years after Rain Parade’s formation, Derek See, on keyboards and guitar, and drummer/percussionist Stephan Junca.
After initially breaking up in 1986 and reuniting more than quarter of a century later, Rain Parade are now fully back in the game. In the last year alone, they have released Last Rays of the Dying Sun – their third studio album in total but first in nearly 40 years – and then last month a new 4-song EP, Last Stop on the Underground. Now they are back out on tour on this side of the Atlantic, playing a total of 13 dates through Scandinavia, Benelux, and the UK, before ending up at the massive Azkena Festival in Vitoria, Spain on the summer solstice.
For the second night running the Brudenell is absolutely buzzing. Once again two separate shows are taking place in the venue’s main concert rooms plus a Euro 2024 football match is being shown on a huge screen outside in the car park. The atmosphere is electric.
Mind you, in a career that now spans more than four decades, Rain Parade have seen it all before. So they just pick up exactly where they had left off here 15 months ago by opening tonight’s set with ‘No Easy Way Down’, the self-same tune they had signed off with last March. And as we hear that glorious melodic psych sound once more its familiarity makes for a reassuring continuation of the never-ending story of Rain Parade.
Over the next hour or so Rain Parade take us on an immersive trip through the seamless sonic drift of their chiming, blissful, occasionally dark, yet always dramatic past and present, whilst the future holds the promise of an upcoming album. The remarkable consistency of their work is no more evident than when they follow their very first 7” record, 1982’s ‘What She’s Done to Your Mind’ with their most recent single, ‘Surprise, Surprise.’ Such is the perfection of their respective compositional form, to the uninitiated it would be virtually impossible to know which one had come first.
Thankfully, the title track from Last Stop on the Underground proves to be nothing of the sort as Rain Parade return to the stage for a final cosmic flourish in the mesmeric shape of ‘Kaleidoscope’ from their seismic debut album, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip. To Manchester, Nottingham, and London they now go, their reputation firmly enhanced and safe in the knowledge that their place in the pantheon of seminal music is assured.
Photos: Simon Godley
More photos of Rain Parade at Brudenell Social Club
