Gig review: Basht. at The Bodega

Esmeralda Road open the evening with a set that feels less like a support slot and more like a slow-burning rendezvous. Their sound slips between textures with jazz-leaning rhythms and moments of near-spoken-word urgency held together by a frontman who delivers each line as if it was uttered in his dying breath. Esmeralda is one of their more delicate tracks and draws phone lights from the crowd without instruction – it’s a rare thing, that kind of instinctive response, and it says everything about their ability to hold a room.

Newer track Bleak proves a highlight, unravelling slowly before swelling into a chaotic crescendo of staccato ad-libs; tangible tension spiralling around a core of quiet despondency. It doesn’t ask to be liked. It just exists, unapologetically, and by the time their set closes, the energy within the room has shifted.

The interlude – Irish folk drifting through the speakers – feels like a clue rather than filler to the plosiveness of the night ahead. Basht. step onstage, Vermillion opens the set, and with it comes a sense of restraint that borders on defiance.

Their instrumentation stretches itself out unhurried as if daring the audience to sit in the discomfort of anticipation. This is a bold move for a band playing to a packed room. But Basht. understand something crucial: tension is as important as release. That tension finally breaks with Burn and Vain following in quick succession. It's loud; and it's earned noise with hands shooting up and bodies beginning to move earnestly.

Basht. have a striking ability to incite chaos, and they structure that chaos deliberately. Perfume and Stockholm pull things inward again, trading blunt-force energy for something more introspective, and it’s here that you begin to realise a narrative thread running through their setlist.

Songs that feel like fragments of conversations and of relationships strained and reshaped; Dive and Sacred Heart extend that mood, each track peeling back another layer, allowing vulnerability to sit front and centre without ever softening the band’s edge.

Frontman Jack Leavey remains an intriguing focal point throughout. There’s no rehearsed crowd work. He stands slightly apart, glasses low on his nose, scanning the room with an almost unnerving stillness. Eye contact becomes its own kind of dialogue because it’s in the songs that he gives everything: lyrics spill out like confessions you weren’t necessarily meant to hear, backed by guitars that oscillate between grunge abrasion and something more melodic. 

Terror TV detonates whatever restraint remained, its echo-laced vocals cutting through a surge of movement that feels almost uncontrollable. A crowd surfer glides overhead for the duration of the entire song, carried by a room that has fully surrendered to the moment, with Leavey crying out to “keep him up, don’t you dare put him down”. Kids VS Guns follows without pause, urgent and unrelenting, its weight sitting somewhere between protest and personal reckoning – and then, just as quickly, they pivot again.

Dirty Horse introduces a different kind of energy. Swaggering, almost playful in comparison though never without bite, it’s here that Basht.’s confidence becomes undeniable. They’re riding the crowd’s momentum; and, they’re shaping it, bending it to fit the emotional arc of the set. By the time Wild Horses, begins the crowd meets it instantly. 

Every word shouted back. Every beat mirrored in movement. In a finale that feels almost cinematic in its scale despite the confines of the room, Leavey steps into the crowd. With no clear distinction between performer and audience, we’ve become a shared pulse that long after the room empties, that feeling – the one you couldn’t quite name while it was happening – continues beating within your consciousness.

Basht. performed at The Bodega on 11th April 2026.

@bashtofficial