Gig review: Cassyette at The Key Club, Leeds
With her debut album finally on the shelves, the rising rockstar offers profuse gratitude and affection for her fans at this up-close-and-personal club launch show from Crash Records.
“How we doin’, Leeds?” Cassy Brooking hollers, teetering on the edge of the tiny box stage nestled at one end of a large basement room beneath the city’s Merrion Centre shopping precinct.
A hundred or so fans screech with the kind of reaction typically saved for teenybopper heartthrobs, an incongruous sound when pressed up against the swaggering industrial groove of opener Ipecac.
Still, the caterwauling cries are rapturously received; the singer-songwriter known as Cassyette lets loose a wolfish grin between breaths, before she bursts into another wail.
The Chelmsford-born performer feels like she has been around longer than she arguably has. Perhaps it is the relentless touring schedule she has put in since the Covid-19 pandemic, or maybe it is the meaty support slots for artists as diverse as Bryan Adams and Bring Me the Horizon that has helped burnish name recognition, let alone her stint as an opener for 2022’s My Chemical Romance reunion tour.
But either way, this week has been a long time coming; with her debut album This World F***ing Sucks finally on the shelves, the rising rockstar has the chance to offer profuse gratitude and affection or her fans at this up-close-and-personal launch show at The Key Club, the latest outstore date put on by local luminaries Crash Records.
Across a pounding 45-minute set – just one of two full electric shows she has performed in immediate support of the LP this month – Cassyette runs through songs built on her cross-genre pollination skills and ability to dress pop hooks in multiple hats with aplomb, punctured mostly by her giddy exuberance.
Go! results in a faux-wall-of-death that mostly finds younger fans hugging it out in place of a circle pit, while another audience member is drawn up after the frantic thrash behind Sex Metal to duet on a karaoke-style version of Five’s retro-fresher favourite Keep On Movin’. “This is so silly,” she laughs after the ad-hoc diversion. “I should do this every night.”
There’s little fat to be found, and all the nu-metal crunch cannot disguise the serious pop-punk hooks hidden behind; Four Leaf Clover and Over It, in particular, are triumphant highlights.
At the close, she vanishes through the exit door, but is back before anyone can become too antsy and restless. “We couldn’t leave you without playing this one!” she cries, as Dear Goth conjures the biggest singalong of all. Expect her to be everywhere again next year too.