Mandy, Indiana’s Exorcism In Heaven

There is an exorcism happening in Heaven tonight. 

In the legendary gay club tucked under Charing Cross Station in London, industrial art-rockers Mandy, Indiana are summoning something feral. The quartet conjure violent, tentacular booms and metallic scrapes that claw at the venue’s brickwork. It’s the perfect atmosphere for their sound to fester. 

Before the band take the electric blue-lit stage, I worry. That these walls won’t be able to carry the full force of it. That the distortion, the fog, the darkness will muddy everything into oblivion. A girl applies cuticle oil to my right. An older woman bristles as an older man pushes in front of her. The room is alive with strange frictions. 

But, man, am I fucking wrong, and I am so happy to be wrong. 

It begins with “A Brighter Tomorrow.” Valentine Caulfield stands motionless in a silk white slip, white lace tights, strings of pearls wrapped around her neck. Small jewels freckle her face. Her voice is high, almost delicate—a haunting, suspended thing. It’s the lightest she will sound all night, a kind of offering before everything is swallowed.

Then something shifts. She’s suddenly all movement — limbs flailing, fingers spread wide, body pulled by the music, as color floods the stage. The sound doesn’t collapse in the room; it expands, becomes physical. The bass presses itself against the walls. The drums feel newly weaponized — precise, punishing, addictive. The stalking pulse of "Drag [Crashed]," off their 2023 debut I've Seen A Way, is almost suffocatingly menacing. Alex Macdougall beats the room to a pulp. Scott Fair and Simon Catling snake-wrangle live-wired screams. Caulfield's vocals demonically contort as she repeats "souris, souris, souris, souris" (which translates to "smile, smile, smile, smile"). At one point, she drops mid-song, as if the beat itself has taken control.

As the set unfolds, Caulfield begins to pull at the crowd. During “I’ll Ask Her,” she sits on the edge of the stage, close enough to collapse the distance entirely, delivering lines that skewer misogynistic violence with a strange, unnerving intimacy. When she steps back, she lets out a sudden, almost relieved laugh, like something has been released.

By “Pinking Shears,” the tension has thickened into something harder, more ecstatic. What becomes clear is that however physical Mandy, Indiana sound on record, it doesn’t come close to this. Live, the music has weight, texture, impact. It moves through you rather than around you. Looking for something to lock onto, to possess.

Caulfield becomes the pulse of it. During “Sevastopol,” she’s sprawled on the stage, screaming into the mic, while a security guard a few feet away looks almost bored, an oddly perfect counterpoint to the chaos. And then she disappears. She dissolves into the crowd.

For the final stretch, it’s impossible to track her. They close out the night with "Magazine" and "Cursive." At one point during the former, all I can hear is her pulpy screams, a mosh pit encircling her like sharks. She moves through the room, shouting, dancing, weaving between bodies, reappearing in flashes on the opposite side of where she began. There’s something almost lavish in the way she occupies the space. Loose, uncontrolled flashes of white silk linger like a ghost. Meanwhile, the band remains on stage, locked in, driving everything forward. It becomes a blur of limbs, sweat, and sudden grins.

It feels like watching an exorcism, but it is also pure joy. Listening back to the album the next morning, the songs feel almost spectral by comparison, like phantoms waiting to be summoned again into something physical, something lived.