Photos and Review by Jolene Rheault
There is a distinct kind of magic reserved strictly for Cat’s Cradle Backroom. While the historic main room across the hall gets all the marquee glory, the Backroom is where you go to catch the sweat off a headstock, stand right against the edge of the low riser, and feel the bass rattle your sternum before the sound even hits the back wall. On Sunday night in Carrboro, that tight space became an absolute pressure cooker of sound.
Birmingham newcomers Wax Monkey kicked things off, treating the early crowd to an impressive display of chops. Formed in 2023, the five-piece plays with an easy, telepathic chemistry that usually takes a decade of highway miles to earn. Frontman Henry Cardwell brought rich, soulful vocal grit, locked in tandem with Wilder Hines’ blistering, soaring guitar leads. Between Hudson Murrell’s swirling organ textures and the dialed-in rhythm section of Jones Beavers (bass) and Harrison Wood (drums), the quintet slid gracefully from swampy Allman Brothers groove into sprawling, Phish-inspired improv peaks. They played with zero hesitation, setting aside any Sunday night chill to prove they’re a young outfit with serious mileage ahead.
To see Karina Rykman in a room this close is practically a contact sport. She doesn’t perform at an audience; she grabs everyone in the room by the lapels, cranks the distortion all the way to the right, and radiates pure kinetic energy. Backed by Adam November—operating guitars, loopers, and texture pedals like a mad scientist—and the thunderous pocket of drummer Chris Corsico, Rykman hit the stage grinning, bouncing on her heels, and ready to detonate.
Opening with the dirty, low-slung riff of “Dirty South,” the band quickly shifted gears into the fresh material off her brand-new record, Late Checkout, which dropped just last month. Ripping through the punchy title track and a revved-up “Easy Rider” before sinking into the sun-drenched, shimmering chords of “Shoegaze Summer,” the new tunes already feel fully road-tested and feral. The interplay here is wild: one second you’re floating in an airy indie-pop dream, and the next, November stomps on an overdrive pedal, Corsico cracks the snare, and Rykman is launching two feet into the air, hammering her four strings without missing a single sixteenth note.
She kept the momentum rolling by weaving past staples with the new batch, dropping the beloved title track “Joyride” alongside idiosyncratic hooks like “Plants” and “Change My Flight.” The Late Checkout cuts anchored the set’s emotional core—tunes like “Riverside Drive” and “Childlike” proved how her songwriting continues to mature while keeping that unhinged, neon-splattered drive intact, flowing right into the gritty, swaggering bass bounce of “City Kids.” In a space as intimate as the Backroom, the usual Sunday night reserve completely dissolved; by mid-set, it felt less like a formal gig and more like a private party where everyone happened to know every cue.
The band kept the pedal down through the home stretch, rolling through “Reboot,” “Spacecase,” and “Zoom Out” with relentless drive and infectious momentum. To cap it all off, they tore into an unhinged, scorched-earth cover of the Butthole Surfers’ “Pepper,” blowing out the room and leaving Carrboro in a haze of feedback, sweat, and grins.
Karina Rykman in an intimate room is pure lightning in a bottle. If you walked into the Backroom carrying the dreaded Sunday scaries, you walked out completely cured.
