Artemas in Philly brought the dance goths into the light
Artists: Artemas, Henry Morris, DJ Jean Pierre LaCroix
Venue: Franklin Music Hall, Philadelphia, October 2026
“If you pay cash, I will spend it on on wine and cigarettes.”
These were the words I walked into from French DJ Jean Pierre LaCroix as I entered the Franklin Music Hall balcony with a pint of Troegs and the hope for a show that could glow up my ribs with atmosphere.
LaCroix opened with a mash-up DJ set and had only the nicest commentary for his own music (“Enough of this shit song,” he said, before plugging the merch). Bedroom pop jean-throb Henry Morris followed with a style of breakup pop that made me wish I was both less and more heartbroken. So confusing.
If you’re coming into this blind, here’s a sample:
I’ll admit I went into my first Artemas show with a bingo card of expectation. I’ve been jamming this 3 a.m. make-eye-contact-in-the-club pop for the past two years, mostly as I drive to traditionally sexy venues like…the library.
Oh, you want to know what goes on the Artemas live-show bingo card?
Here it is.
Bingo Card Square One: Peak vampire dance goth culture
The internet says indie sleaze peaked in the mid-2000s, but Artemas has introduced or folded into a beautiful revitalization of torn fishnets and black eyeliner. It’s honestly never gone away—fishnets and face paint forever. Artemas’s own “signature” outfit was on display—an oversized sweater tucked into leather pants. Henry Morris wore the ripped-JNCO-jean style with wallet chains and a camo tank top. It feels insulting to call it “European trailer park” for a type of music so sensuously dirty (and Henry Morris is from Los Angeles, as far as I can tell), but maybe let’s go with ”Lo-fi thrift glow.”
Remember that club scene in The Matrix and Rob Zombie is thumping and Neo is all like, “I’m not The One, I’m just a simpleton programmer”? This was my dream for the Artemas crowd: The Matrix but horny. The Philadelphia crowd achieved about 47 percent of the dream.
Bingo Card Square Two: Bathtub orgies on stage
“I’ll hit it from the back, so that you don’t get attached,” screamed a bunch of 20-year-olds who still go to church with their parents, as they sang the famously chantable line from Artemas’s let’s-hook-up-and-never-do-it-again-until-tomorrow song, “I like the way you kiss me.” The sultry deviant glow of his music had me expecting something like strippers and fireworks on stage as a hot goth wanders the stage with a yellow python around their neck. Besides the couple ferociously making out on the balcony like the world might melt tomorrow, it was much more wholesome.
Bingo Card Square Three: In-crowd consensual leather piglets
Artemas’s lyrics and thumping put-your-hands-on-me vibes are so blatantly hypersexualized that I thought we might see a little piglet gimp boy getting led through the crowd on a chain. Look, sir, your music sounds like it should incite kinks. Shame on me for hoping—there was none of that.
Alice in Chains “Nutshell” closes the curtain
Go to a show, and life context is so amplified by the lights, the mood projected from onstage and into my veins to mingle with whatever I carried with me into it. We slurp up this shared pulsating moment and let it sprint through us. Artemas left the stage and the lights stayed on. I lingered. Nutshell by Alice in Chains drifted through the venue. I stood long enough to let this moment sink roots, then I walked three blocks to my car at 9th and Spring Garden.
I thumped Artemas all the way back up North Broad.