“Can we…” Jacquie Neville, of The Balconies, starts, her hand outstretched into a particularly bright beam of light above the Garrison audience. Her hair is large and magnificent and her eyes are wide. “Can we get sexy for a minute?”

She strums short accented chords on her guitar and stares out into the audience. Her brother Steve is on bass to her right, poised. Though his face is surely there, it isn’t visible – his hair forms an opaque shield around his features.

To be in the audience, Jacquie’s stare is an experience in itself. She grabs you with it and seems to bore deep into your soul.

After an eternity, her brother comes in with a thumping but funky bass line. Jacquie looks over at him.  There’s a pause as his bass picks up. Her gaze breaks into a huge smile.  Drummer Liam Jaeger comes in with a driving drum beat, and Jacquie starts to dance like crazy.  It’s as if the moment of soul-boring never happened.

Neville’s hair flies as she starts really moving her legs. Soon, the stage is just sweaty chaos. Both Neville’s dancing hard and it’s clear that Jacquie is not going to be standing still any time soon.  “I want to get you sweating,” she says low into the mic. Even as sings into the mic with all she’s got, she’s moving her legs and thrusting her guitar.

It’s a blend of pop-rock with a raw driving beats that’s always threatening to break into serious dance rhythms.  It’s not an empty threat. Neville’s voice is high and powerful but also clean.

Even as the band let’s loose and explodes into a sweaty loud dance chaos, those moments of soul-boring stares return.  A wall of sound grabs you with a gaze of raw badass-ness, and holds you for a moment only to break into a huge smile and go nuts throwing its head around.

Photos by Andrew Weir