All photos by James Broscheid
On the night of January 23, 2025, Club Congress felt less like a venue and more like a space willingly overtaken by sound. From the first dissonant, guitars swelled with patient intensity, drenched in layers of reverb and distortion, gradually folding the room into a dense, hypnotic haze, the room transformed into an almost hallucinatory landscape. LSD and the Search for God have long mastered the art of the sonic blanket, and live, that mastery reached a breathtaking intensity. Every note, every layer, seemed to breathe with the audience, folding listeners into a sound that was simultaneously vast and intimately personal.
The band’s power lies in their balance between ethereality and weight. The shimmering guitars of Andy Liszt and Chris Fifield, paired with E. Scarlett Levinson’s luminous vocal layers, created a drifting, otherworldly atmosphere. At the same time, the rhythm section, Mikey Jones (Swervedriver) on drums and Matt Sumrow on bass, anchored the sound with a low-end rumble that grounded the music without diminishing its airy qualities. Air and gravity coexisted in perfect equilibrium, allowing the band to expand the room’s dimensions without ever losing a sense of cohesion.
The set opened with the propulsive drive of “Backwards,” immediately establishing the band’s signature wall of sound. The guitars intertwined in hypnotic loops while the rhythm section propelled the momentum forward, creating a tactile pulse that seemed to resonate in every chest. On “Let It Go,” the interplay between swirling guitar lines and the low-end pulse built a towering crescendo. Feedback loops danced overhead as the hushed, spectral vocals hovered like light filtering through mist, transforming tension into a sublime form of release.
Moments of restraint proved equally powerful. “(I Don’t Think That We Should) Take It Slow” demonstrated the band’s ability to weaponize silence, letting space hang in the air with almost unbearable anticipation before gently unfolding into lush harmonics. The dreamy textures of “Elizabeth” and the fuzzed-out drive of “Starshine” showed the band’s uncanny skill at threading melody through dense soundscapes, with the interplay of light and shadow, both visually and sonically, amplifying every emotional nuance.
The ethereal drift of “This Time” deepened the night’s surreal quality. The band’s long, droning transitions between songs ensured the spell was unbroken, giving the performance the sense of a single, continuous journey rather than a sequence of tracks. When “Without You” unfolded, its panoramic structure allowed each sonic texture, guitars, vocals, bass, drums, to breathe fully, expanding the venue into an immersive, almost cathedral-like space.
The emotional zenith arrived with “Starshine.” Soaring harmonies collapsed into jagged distortion, angelic voices cutting through waves of feedback. It was a moment of pure catharsis, one that made the audience collectively lean into the sound as a single organism, reinforced by the evolving textures of “Starting Over,” leaving a lingering sense that what had been experienced was less a performance and more a shared, living dream.
Throughout the evening, LSD and the Search for God demonstrated why their limited discography holds such immense depth. Their music is not about nostalgia, volume, or spectacle, it is about immersion, about dissolving the boundaries between audience, stage, and sound. At Club Congress, the band created a live experience that was simultaneously physical, emotional, and transcendent. Long after the final feedback faded, the memory of that night lingered like a reverberation in the chest: a sustained, iridescent journey through the very heart of sound and light.
Upcoming 2026 tour dates:
March 26: Reno, NV at The Alpine
March 28: Boise, ID at Treefort Music Festival – The Shrine
March 29: Missoula, MT at The Showroom at The Zacc
March 30: Spokane, WA at The District
April 1: Bend, OR at Volcanic Theatre
Further details here: Bandcamp | Don Giovanni Records | Instagram | Facebook
