Los Angeles rock band Cherry Glazerr - Clem Creevy, Sami Perez, Luke MacDonald and Nick Pillot - kicked off their highly-anticipated Touch of Chaos European summer tour at Whelan’s last night with a fiery bang.

The four piece quietly walked on stage and plugged in before the crowd registered their presence. It wasn’t long until the cheers ensued like rolling thunder.

Cherry Glazerr at Whelan's, 29 May 2024. Copyright Bailey Shropshire

Donning a cherry-red top and a black mini skirt, frontwoman Clem Creevy eyed her bandmates before they bursted into the exuberant, reverb-heavy ‘Touched You With My Chaos,’ off their new album I Don’t Want You Anymore. The audience came prepared, shoulders rolling, heads banging like doves walking, arms flailing about as they sang along.

Clem Creevy’s onstage charisma was augmented by her undeniable artistry. Brandishing her guitar like a weapon, the polymath’s searing peach-fuzz riffs and nimble-fingered intuition wielded brute force. The edge of her voice was as jagged as the lid of a tin can and slick as black ice on such songs as ‘Soft Like a Flower.’

Cherry Glazerr at Whelan's, 29 May 2024. Copyright Bailey Shropshire

Drummer Nick Pillot matched the frontwoman’s energy. With his atom-smashing breaks and impressive stamina, he played every song as though it was his last. Sami Perez’s bass stylings were a reckoning, laying the groundwork for each song and populating negative spaces with her own propulsive, supernova riffs. On guitar and keys, Luke MacDonald gave a rip-roaring performance with his uncompromising presence and emboldened musical direction.

It was a wondrous, road-tested display of the songs off Cherry Glazerr’s first album in four years, I Don’t Want You Anymore, which dropped in September last year. The record saw Clem, and a dazzling cohort of collaborators, tap into a pure electric current where you can tell her antenna is picking up frequencies that many artists only dream of tapping into.

Songs such as the buoyant ‘Eat You Like a Pill’ and ‘I Don’t Want You Anymore’ came to life in technicolour bliss. The rawness of their live renditions offered a frayed edge to their studio counterparts, proving that such tracks are best experienced among the sweat-drenched bodies shuffling like sardines in a tightly-packed space.

Cherry Glazerr at Whelan's, 29 May 2024. Copyright Bailey Shropshire

The band also played a breadth of songs from previous albums - such as their breakneck 2017 debut LP Apocalipstick and the tempestuous 2019 album Stuffed and Ready - each a tight sonic attack which saw Cherry Glazerr’s sonic and lyrical prowess build and build.

Stuffed and Ready’s ‘Wasted Nun’ was especially vibrant, an alt-rock suite of clanking-piston hooks and claustrophobic riffs which nearly brought down the walls. With its biting and frenetic soundscape, the track blends DIY garage sensibilities with a tinnitus-inducing drone redolent of early My Bloody Valentine.

They ended the show with a freight train of an encore, covering Nirvana’s ‘Territorial Pissings,’ which elevated the already through-the-roof enthusiasm of the audience.

Cherry Glazerr at Whelan's, 29 May 2024. Copyright Bailey Shropshire

I left the venue with the same kind of dizzying headrush one feels from standing up too fast. Walking home, I looked around the calm moonlit-scape of Camden St, like something out of an Edward Hopper painting, battling a bends-induced fluster one suffers after coming up for air too quickly. Everyone must come back to Earth at some point.

It was exactly the kind of performance you’d expect from one of rock’s most dazzling, ambitious acts. It jerks and swings, it’s a bumpy ride, but one you’d happily buckle up for again.

• Cherry Glazerr play Belfast's Ulster Sports Club tonight. For tickets, please see here. 

Check out the full gallery from last night's gig here. Photography by Bailey Shropshire.