Taking Back Sunday / Person L @ Sayreville 6/22/10

June 22, 2010

For the first time since 2003, John Nolan and Shaun Cooper returned to the stage with Taking Back Sunday, performing on a warm New Jersey evening at Starland Ballroom. With their “original lineup” in tact — note that the band actually shuffled members a few times before releasing a full-length album — the expectation was that the band would return to their roots, sticking heavily to their excellent 2002 debut, Tell All Your Friends. The show sold out immediately, packing 2500 rabid fans into the fairly small Sayreville venue.

Person L, the new project from The Starting Line’s Kenny Vasoli, provided lone support for Taking Back Sunday. Beginning at 8PM with “Goodness Gracious”, the band’s eight-song setlist dragged along for thirty-five minutes, failing to ever capture any purpose with their songs. On tracks like “Wooden Soldiers”, from the band’s 2008 debut, Initial, boredom quickly boiled into frustration with Vasoli simply repeating the phrase “when wooden soldiers catch their breath” over and over across the song’s five minute duration.

Person L

Person L

Playing in front of few who knew Person L’s catalog, the band took the opportunity to debut a brand new song, which sounded at home alongside cuts home on the band’s sophomore effort, The Positives. A few interesting hooks and some varied percussion — the five-piece employs two drummers — kept things somewhat lively, but ultimately Person L failed to secure anything memorable with their time on stage. There’s no doubting Vasoli’s heart, but it makes sense to question how his once-solid pop-songwriting has dwindled towards directionless jams.

Goodness Gracious
Wooden Soldiers
Good Days
Help Yourself
(new song)
(new song)
The Positives
Untitled

Following an uninteresting set from Person L, the lights dimmed and Michael Rapaport’s brief Beautiful Girls speech played through the PA. Most well known to those in attendance as the introduction to Taking Back Sunday‘s “Great Romances of the 20th Century” demo, a feeling of anticipation rushed through the venue. The first chords of “Cute Without the E” quickly cut the formidable tension, and the entire crowd rushed towards the stage, screaming the song’s opening accusation en route: “Your lipstick, his collar — don’t bother, angel, I know exactly what goes on.”

Taking Back Sunday

Taking Back Sunday

And like that, the “old school” Taking Back Sunday was off to the races. “Set Phasers to Fun” followed, and the crowd hungrily digested the 2004 Where You Want to Be opener. Brief, yet warranted, boos came from the crowd when the band began playing “Liar” from their 2006 effort, Louder Now. Luckily for Taking Back Sunday, the song’s soft introduction was quickly overpowered with distorted guitars and the displeased crowd was drowned out, but the message was clear: the older fans didn’t want to hear the band’s foray into mainstream alternative rock. Frontman Adam Lazzara introduced the long-absent “Bike Scene” by it’s original demo title and noted that that song is one of the oldest written by the lineup on stage. Power-chords slammed as hard as the crowd up until the song’s slower break during which the audience finally stopped moving. Lazzara took the moment of near-silence to acknowledge that co-writer John Nolan urged him not to record the word “silly” as part of the song’s bridge, but he laughed it off and went along: “You’ve got this silly way of keeping me on the edge of my seat.” Louder Now‘s “Error: Operator” was wholly unnecessary, but thankfully a tremendous cover of “Existentialism on Prom Night” followed. The entire crowd, most of whom followed Nolan in 2004 to his new band, Straylight Run, roared to the song’s signature riff. “What’s it Feel Like to Be a Ghost?” was introduced as a dance-number, but the band received considerably more crowd movement to the subsequent song, 2004′s “A Decade Under the Influence”.

Taking Back Sunday

Taking Back Sunday

The lone New Again cut of the evening, “Everything Must Go”, was a near five-minute document of Taking Back Sunday gone wrong. It’s not surprising, then, that the next song, the brand new “The Best Places to be a Mom”, was similarly disappointing — it looks like little has changed from the Long Island’s disastrous New Again songwriting process. “You’re So Last Summer” put the band back on the right track, though, even if it is one of the lesser cuts from Tell All Your Friends. In contrast, “You Know How I Do” was a home-run and possibly the highlight of the evening. The song captured everything good about Taking Back Sunday in a three minute, power-chord driven romp: diary entry lyrics, dueling vocals, and a simple why-didn’t-I-think-to-do-that musical composition.

Taking Back Sunday

Taking Back Sunday

“Baby Your Beard Hurts” returned for the first time since 2004, with a new subtitle, “Why Not a Sexy Pirate”, to boot. The song was enjoyable, even if much of the crowd was hearing it for the very first time, too young to have seen the band on their original Victory Records tours. “Great Romances of the 20th Century” and “Timberwolves at New Jersey” back-to-back were extremely solid, and the band closed things with “MakeDamnSure”, a disappointing end to an otherwise generally exciting set.

Taking Back Sunday

Taking Back Sunday

Luckily, Taking Back Sunday returned to start their encore just a few minutes later. With just Lazarra and Nolan together on stage, the reunited duo acted like old companions who finally realized that petty differences shouldn’t destroy friendships. After acknowledging the Bruce Springsteen influence that lead to hanging up a giant American flag behind the band, Lazzara played a few chords of The Boss’s “Atlantic City” before moving onto “Your Own Disaster”, originally recorded for the band’s five-song demo before Tell All Your Friends. A few tempo issues and some missed lyrics aside, the song was generally a success and a welcomed addition to the “throwback” atmosphere the band cultivated all evening. “There’s No ‘I’ in Team” appropriately concluded the night with Lazarra and Nolan trading line-after-line about heartbreaks and hatred.

Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut from the Team)
Set Phasers to Stun
Liar
One-Eighty by Summer
Monterey Peninsula Bike Scene
Error: Operator
Existentialism on Prom Night (Straylight Run cover)
What’s It Feel Like to Be a Ghost?
A Decade Under the Influence
Everything Must Go
The Best Places to be a Mom
You’re So Last Summer
You Know How I Do
Why Not a Sexy Pirate (Baby Your Beard Hurts)
Great Romances of the 20th Century
Timberwolves at New Jersey
MakeDamnSure
Your Own Disaster
There’s No ‘I’ in Team

Tell All Your Friends cuts “Ghost Man on Third”, “The Blue Channel”, “Head Club”, and “The Ballad of Sal Villanueva” were unfortunately missing, but the band still played a solid nineteen song setlist. Lazzara’s vocals were surprisingly strong, and the rest of the band sounded tight and appeared genuinely happy to be playing together once again. Taking Back Sunday successfully executed their reunion show; the band now needs to prove that they won’t rely purely on nostalgia by writing their first worthwhile album in more than five years.

All photographs of Taking Back Sunday by the incredible Michael Dubin.

2 Comments | New Jersey, Person L, Sayreville, Starland Ballroom, Taking Back Sunday | Permalink
Posted by Anthony Charles Ambrose

The Gaslight Anthem / Rival Schools / Tim Barry @ NYC 6/15/2010

June 15, 2010

“We’re going to kick things off in New York City”, announced a paraphrased Brian Fallon to the Irving Plaza audience. “And we’re going to wrap things up in Jersey.”

The tri-state crowd, packed to capacity and sweating on a hot New York evening, responded with roaring applause. Of course, kicking things off meant the The Gaslight Anthem’s first show supporting the brand new American Slang. In choosing the 1000-person capacity Irving Plaza as the spot to unveil their latest effort on SideOneDummy Records , The Gaslight Anthem ensured an intimate celebration for the local scene that nurtured the band since their inception. The night served as a celebration of two worlds, with the quartet playing their new album in its entirety (minus closer “We Did it When We Were Young”) and also tossing in a healthy portion of material across their previous three discs.

Before The Gaslight Anthem, though, former Avail frontman Tim Barry opened the show, playing a thirty-minute folk-punk acoustic set. The Virginia-born singer-songwriter spent a portion of his set focusing on issues local to his hometown, Richmond, but still connected to the New York audience with worldwide themes of equality and justice. “Prosser’s Gabriel”, from his latest effort on Suburban Home Records, was a particularly intelligent look at the 1800 Virginia slave rebellion, questioning why history books seem to exclude mention of the state-issued murder of nearly thirty slaves. “Avoiding Catonic Surrender”, from Barry’s 2006 debut, Rivanna Junction, name-checked The Gaslight Anthem’s hometown and caught the crowd’s attention; with interest piqued, Barry thanked the crowd for showing up early to listen and closed with “Dog Bumped”, a true story about a friend locked in jail for murdering a man who had abused his sister.

Rival Schools performed next, playing a style in stark contrast to the previous half-hour of acoustic folk-punk. Best described as late 1990s hard/alternative rock, the four-piece failed to impress during their forty minutes on stage. The quartet sounded tight and precise, but their sound seemed tired. Their lone album, United by Fate, wasn’t particularly fresh when it was released in 2001 on Island Records, and the songs hardly hold up a decade later. Cuts like “The Switch” show that the band has vision, but most of the band’s best moments are quickly lost in humming guitars and droning rhythms. Frontman Walter Schreifels, a member of three of the most influential punk/hardcore bands over the last three decades (Youth of Today, Gorilla Biscuits, Quicksand), has much more potential than is executed with the recently reunited Rival Schools.

The Gaslight Anthem

The Gaslight Anthem

Following a very quick set change, American Slang‘s title track kicked things off for The Gaslight Anthem, with a surprising number of fans singing in unison with frontman Brian Fallon’s opening words: “Look what you started.” Generally, the crowd is not supposed to sing along to your record release show. American Slang, however, leaked months before its store date and much of the audience came prepared. Still, the whole crowd wasn’t into it — The Gaslight Anthem’s live show thrives on singalongs, and a good number of fans felt left out during the show’s first few minutes. The New Jersey natives, with enough foresight and touring experience, rectified things with “Old White Lincoln” immediately following “American Slang”.

The Gaslight Anthem

The Gaslight Anthem

The speedy “Stay Lucky” brought things back to new territory, but the crowd was dosed with enough adrenaline following an excellent performance of the previous The ’59 Sound favorite to keep things energetic and lively. “Bring it On” went next, followed by “The ’59 Sound”: not a body was still nor a voice silent — everyone in the building sang and danced along to the band’s breakout hit. The alternating punches of two of their most popular songs tossed into an otherwise straight play-through of their new album worked magnificently, displaying the quartet’s peerless vision of  creating an exciting rock-and-roll concert experience.

The Gaslight Anthem

The Gaslight Anthem

Of course, the fact that American Slang is absolutely awesome doesn’t hurt, either. “Spirit of Jazz” proved that The Gaslight Anthem can still craft a punk-driven powerhouse romp amidst an album full of more spacious, slower tempo cuts, and, for the first time performing the song, “Orphans” sounded as solid as anything else in their catalog. “Boxer”, minus Fallon’s staccato studio intro, was as good as if not better than its album counterpart. “Old Haunts” both reminisced in and dismissed the nostalgia of Sink or Swim‘s “The Navesink Banks”, seeming to indicate the band’s desire to move forward while still holding onto and balancing their past efforts.

The Gaslight Anthem

The Gaslight Anthem

Dedicated to their friends and punk pioneers, The Bouncing Souls, The Gaslight Anthem embraced their past with “We Came to Dance”, and the crowd responded appropriately with waves of energy for the first Sink or Swim song of the night. “Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts” rounded out The Gaslight Anthem’s first set, and fans chanted for just a few moments before the quartet started their massive eight-song encore. The penultimate “Here’s Looking at You, Kid” — particularly the not-so-subtle reference to New York’s 7th Avenue — was met with erupting applause before the band wrapped up with an enormous performance of The ’59 Sound closer “The Backseat”.

American Slang
Old White Lincoln
Stay Lucky
Bring it On
The ’59 Sound
The Diamond Church Street Choir
The Queen of Lower Chelsea
Orphans
Boxer
Old Haunts
Spirit of Jazz
We Came to Dance
Great Expectations
Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts
The Navesink Banks
Drive
Wooderson
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Miles Davis and the Cool
Senor and the Queen
Here’s Looking at You Kid
The Backseat

The Gaslight Anthem sounded remarkable the entire evening, somehow managing to come off even tighter than their last already-excellent trip to the city. Fallon was playful, at one point kicking a balloon “in honor of the World Cup”, and the entire band seemed genuinely excited to be on stage in New York City for the first time in 2010. Set selection was top-notch; mixing up a straight run through American Slang with their biggest singles tossed in kept both die-hard and casual fans alike entertained throughout the entire evening.

The Gaslight Anthem wraps up the American Slang tour in their home state in August but return to Manhattan on September 30 to perform at the massive Radio City in what will be their largest headlining gig to date. Keep your eyes open for The Gaslight Anthem in 2010, and be sure to pick up the stellar American Slang. The many comparison’s to Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty aren’t just sonic; The Gaslight Anthem might one day be a household name.

All photos by the incredible Lorraine Schwartz.

Leave a Comment » | New York, New York City, Rival Schools, The Fillmore New York, The Gaslight Anthem, Tim Barry | Permalink
Posted by Anthony Charles Ambrose

Anberlin / Story of the Year / Terrible Things @ NYC 6/3/10

June 3, 2010

An early show at Manhattan’s Highline Ballroom — a 700-person capacity venue positioned near the Hudson River — featured a solid duo of proven veterans, Anberlin and Story of the Year, alongside up-and-coming Terrible Things. The Thursday evening date in New York City was part of a brief tour that serves as a warm-up run for headliners Anberlin, who are set to release their fifth full-length album, Dark is the Way, Light is a Place, on September 21 through Universal Republic Records.

On their first tour, Terrible Things began at 6:30, and the four-piece sounded remarkably tight through their half-hour set. This comes as little surprise given the musical experiences of the band’s members: guitarists Fred Mascherino and Andy Jackson were a part of Taking Back Sunday and Hot Rod Circuit, respectively, and drummer Josh Eppard was a part of Coheed and Cambria. Rounding out the band’s live lineup is former Gainer bassist Jason Barker. Mascherino provided lead vocals for most of the set, beginning with new versions of songs from his prior projects including the The Color Fred’s “Terrible Things” and Breaking Pangaea’s “Lullaby”. Jackson did take lead vocals on “Up at Night”, contributing some lyrics from his days in Hot Rod Circuit, but Mascherino seemed to front the band and was the primary vessel for the band’s interaction with the crowd.

Despite their technical prowess and live setting know-how, Terrible Things certainly didn’t break any new ground at the Highline Ballroom, especially rehashing cuts from old bands. Their debut album is finished and waiting to be released this August; hopefully there’s some substance behind the songs. It would be a shame to waste the collective talents of these individuals who have, in the past, proven that they can excel under the right circumstances.

Terrible Things (The Color Fred cover)
Lullaby (Breaking Pangaea cover)
Not Alone
Revolution
The Hills of Birmingham
Up at Night
(new song)
(new song)

Story of the Year began with the racing “And the Hero Will Drown” and didn’t let off the gas once during their eight-song setlist. Though the band let their best song go first, Story of the Year still packed a walloping punch for the rest of the evening, with songs like “The Antidote” and “Our Time is Now”, the latter dedicated to “big ugly dudes” who enjoy heavy-handed hard rock. The St. Louis five-piece sounded as strong as ever, and the band tweaked their already-solid stage presence with tightly choreographed spins and jumps. Frontman Dan Marsala was passable, but guitarist Phil Sneed’s backing vocals were fantastic and added extra power and quality to the band’s songs.

Story of the Year excels when embracing their post-hardcore roots (like the penultimate “In the Shadows”) but flounders when juggling alternative rock with radio-friendly choruses (“Anthem of Our Dying Day”, “Until the Day I Die”). As the band’s biggest MTV hits, though, those songs are fan-favorites and the crowd embraces these lackluster cuts. Thankfully, Story of the Year’s energy and solid musicianship transform the songs into enjoyable three-and-a-half-minute live romps. Stripped of their excessive studio production, Story of the Year not only holds up — they sound even better.

And the Hero Will Drown
The Antidote
Our Time is Now
The Ghost of You and I
Anthem of Our Dying Day
The Dream is Over
In the Shadows
Until the Day I Die

Headliner Anberlin performed a one hour set with mixed results. On paper, the band’s fourteen songs look strong, covering half of their excellent 2007 effort, Cities. Execution, however, tells a different story. Normally a standout vocalist, frontman Stephen Christian sounded subpar through the whole evening, missing vocal queues and struggling to hit the notes that make Anberlin such a solid band in the studio. This lead to harmony problems, as well, and Anberlin surprisingly sounded like a struggling local act — not a major label backed powerhouse.

Highlights from the set included “Impossible” and the debut of “We Owe This to Ourselves”, two brand new songs from Anberlin’s upcoming Dark is the Way, Light is a Place; the songs sounded great and should excite longtime Anberlin fans who enjoy the band’s very accessible blend of alternative rock and “emo”. A New Order cover seemed oddly out of place — especially during such a brief set — and it was difficult to judge how the band handled it with Christian’s distracting vocals. An energetic take on “Feel Good Drag”, the band’s biggest hit to date, seemed to indicate that the set was over; Anberlin fired back with one more, though, Never Take Friendship Personal‘s excellent “A Day Late”, before the house lights came on just before 9:45.

Godspeed
The Resistance
A Whisper and a Clamor
Disappear
We Owe This To Ourselves (new song / first time)
Paperthin Hymn
The Unwinding Cable Car
Inevitable
Hello Alone
Impossible
True Faith (New Order cover)
Dismantle. Repair.
Feel Good Drag
A Day Late

Story of the Year played for just forty minutes yet managed to outclass headliners Anberlin, a strange feat that should leave Anberlin embarrassed of their weak performance. The band will undoubtedly return to New York City in support of their upcoming full-length, and one can only hope that they work out the glaring flaws in their live exhibition. Conversely, Story of the Year returns to the Big Apple on August 9, looking to expand their already-solid live set into a powerful headlining outing at the Blender Theater.

Leave a Comment » | Anberlin, Highline Ballroom, New York, New York City, Story of the Year, Terrible Things | Permalink
Posted by Anthony Charles Ambrose

Coheed and Cambria / Circa Survive @ Philadelphia 5/21/2010

May 21, 2010

Supporting their latest release on Columbia Records, Year of the Black Rainbow, Coheed and Cambria arrived in The City of Brotherly Love to perform two straight nights at the Electric Factory. With support from locals Circa Survive and Torche, the weekend’s sold-out shows promised to be an extremely enjoyable experience for anyone interested in high-pitched vocals, shredding guitars, and mathy drumming.

Circa Survive

Circa Survive

Circa Survive began slightly after 9PM, walking on stage to an enormous hometown applause. Performing in front of a set of mirrors lining the back part of the stage, Circa Survive’s curious blend of progressive rock and post-hardcore seemed all the more mysterious with the reflective glass. “Get Out” kicked things off with frontman Anthony Green singing: “I can’t get started from the part where I left off yesterday / should have spent my time a little wiser!”. The crowd sang along with Green through most of the set, even on cuts from barely-a-month old Sky Blue Noise.

Circa Survive

Circa Survive

Just a handful of the band’s ten songs came from their latest album; the band’s 2005 debut, Juturna, surprisingly contributed four songs including an excellent performance of “The Glorious Nosebleed” with an extended jam tossed in. On Letting Go chipped in two more cuts, including the spacious “Living Together”. Lead by the winding guitars of Colin Frangicetto and Brendan Ekstrom (both former members of Philadelphia’s This Day Forward), “In the Morning and Amazing” was certainly one of the evening’s highlights.

Circa Survive

Circa Survive

The five-piece’s forty-five minute set neared its end with with the crowd-pleasing “In Fear and Faith”, one of Juturna‘s standout songs . Closer “Imaginary Enemy” offered Green a chance to showcase his range, and the Philadelphia local nailed the opportunity: indeed, Green sounded better than ever, evidence that the singer spent a considerable amount of time fine-tuning his vocals.

Get Out
Glass Arrows
Stop the Fucking Car
In the Morning and Amazing
The Great Golden Baby
Through the Desert Alone
Living Together
The Glorious Nosebleed
In Fear and Faith
Imaginary Enemy

Coheed and Cambria

Coheed and Cambria

Coheed and Cambria began with “One”, the first song on Year of the Black Rainbow. Lead by frontman Claudio Sanchez, Coheed and Cambria sounded as crisp as ever, but also way too loud for the 3000-capacity Electric Factory. Every hit on Chris Pennie’s kickdrum was eardrum-piercing, and songs which featured him wailing away on the double-bass pedal were nearly unlistenable. Moving further away from the stage helped, but the show was still too loud and often muddy. This was unfortunate because guitarist Travis Stever and bassist Michael Todd sounded spot-on but almost inaudible over the percussion.

Coheed and Cambria

Coheed and Cambria

Current single “Here We Are the Juggernaut” was enjoyable, but the band really shined when they executed older cuts like “The Velourium Camper III: Al the Killer” or “Everything Evil” with remarkable precision. In fact, the live performance of the latter The Second Stage Turbine song almost renders the studio cut obsolete: with Pennie on the skins, the song received extra fills making it sound enormous and truly fleshed out. The new “World of Lines”  sounded great, another example of how intricate drumming really enhances Coheed and Cambria’s sound. Conversely, “Made Out of Nothing” was just too cluttered; the song never gets a chance to breathe, and the band could do a better job walking the line between “full” and “overcrowded”. “Three Evils” brought things back to the band’s pop sensibilities; Sanchez masterfully crafts simple lines (“Pull the trigger and the nightmare stops”) into tremendous hooks that force everyone in the crowd to sing along, as if they themselves were held at gunpoint.

Coheed and Cambria

Coheed and Cambria

“Time Consumer” was an excellent surprise, and “No World for Tomorrow” sounded enormous, exactly as the band intended it to. Breakout 2003 single “A Favor House Atlantic”, from the near-perfect In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, captured the same pop-perfection that “Three Evils” managed; the sold out crowd sang along to the song’s signature lines: “Good eye, sniper / I shoot, and you run”. That album’s title track closed the first part of Coheed and Cambria’s set, building an enormous energy and tension that boiled over into chants demanding an encore. Of course the band’s “encore” was staged, but wrapping up the first sixty minutes of their setlist with an epic ten-minute performance was quite powerful.

Coheed and Cambria

Coheed and Cambria

The simple, industrial-influenced “Far” began Coheed and Cambria’s three-song encore. “Welcome Home” was predictably incredible and the night’s shining moment; this generation’s “War Pigs” or “Highway Star”, the song is a technical-yet-melodic gem. Rush-inspired “21:13″ properly wrapped up the band’s ninety-minute setlist, taking the crowd through various movements that ultimately culminated in an eerie reprise of The Second Stage Turbine Blade‘s “IRO-Bot”.

One
The Broken
Here We Are Juggernaut
The Velourium Camper III: Al the Killer
Everything Evil
World of Lines
Made Out of Nothing (All That I Am)
Three Evils (Embodied In Love and Shadow)
Pearl of the Stars
Time Consumer
No World for Tomorrow
Guns of Summer
A Favor House Atlantic
In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3
Far
Welcome Home
21:13

Supporting the brand new Year of the Black Rainbow, eight of the album’s twelve tracks predictably made up the seventeen-song setlist. Though the album is far from Coheed and Cambria’s best, it still contains a handful of very enjoyable tracks in a live setting. Joined by touring keyboardist Wes Styles, the Poughkeepsie four-piece sounded precise the entire evening, and, with the addition of some of the band’s strongest older cuts  into the setlist– bonus points for including five songs from 2003′s In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 — the night was excellent. Support from Circa Survive iced the already sweet cake. Don’t miss the chance to catch either of these bands on any future tours in the area, as it seems they each get better and better every year.

1 Comment | Circa Survive, Coheed and Cambria, Electric Factory, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia | Permalink
Posted by Anthony Charles Ambrose

Recover @ NYC 5/7/2010

May 7, 2010

With support from Love Automatic and Bombers, Recover played Webster Hall’s basement (officially, The Studio at Webster Hall) on a Friday evening in New York City. Just Recover’s second show in New York City since calling it quits in 2005, the tiny cellar was fairly packed with fans looking to see if Recover still had the fire that made them such an essential live act in the earlier part of the decade.

Recover

Recover

Recover began at 10:30PM, opening with “Night of the Creeps” from their farewell full-length, This May be the Year I Disappear. “Fuck Me For Free” went next, and the band sounded as crisp as always. “Bad Timing” from the band’s Ceci N’est Pas Recover EP was particularly solid; two new songs went in the middle of the set, with guitarist Robert Mann providing lead vocals on both cuts. Frontman Dan Keyes returned to the microphone on an explosive performance of “Push Push”.

Recover

Recover

“Downtown”, a deep cut only on a rare disc known as Challenger, was surprising well-received by a crowd that clearly missed the Texas four-piece. As if to say thanks for the longtime support, the band dug back to their 2001 Fueled by Ramen debut and ripped through “Dialogue from a Film”, recalling the days when the band was more closely associated with the hardcore music scene. The back-to-back punches of “Sleeper” and “My Only Cure” just after 11PM were clearly the night’s highlights and also spectacular reminders of why Recover has been so dearly missed.

Night of the Creeps
Fuck Me For Free
LA
Bad Timing
Clouds Higher than Any Bird
No Big Deal
Push Push
Downtown
Dialogue from a Film
Sleeper
My Only Cure
Pardon the Wait

Recover

Recover

The band left the stage briefly, but returned with the decade-old “Pardon the Wait” from Rodeo and Picasso. Keyes climbed onto the ceiling’s pipes and dangled upside-down, screaming through the songs’s opening words: “Pardon the hate and the animosity towards your belief system and your hypocrisy!” The crowd rushed forward for the two-minute cut, grabbing at the hanging singer and singing along to every word. By the time Recover finished their twelve-song set, the crowd called for more but ultimately settled on the pleasant news that a new album is coming soon.

Leave a Comment » | New York, New York City, Recover, Webster Hall | Permalink
Posted by Anthony Charles Ambrose

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