By IAN HRABE
Alkaline Trio was my favorite band when I was 16. One of my earliest showgoing memories is sneaking out to Lawrence with a friend to see Alkaline Trio play the Bottleneck, only to be shut down by my friend's Mom. (Right outside the venue, too! We had tickets and everything and we'd been found out and forced to drive back to Olathe. It was a sad day.)
Unlike the Dashboard Confessionals of our time, Alkaline Trio's early records still hold up as heartfelt "emo-core" masterpieces full of energy, angst, and Matt Skiba's biting sense of humor. Cursive, who have become Omaha's most notable band this side of Bright Eyes, were fitting openers given frontman Tim Kasher's penchant for dark, angsty songwriting. While the early Cursive records haven't held up quite as well as Alkaline Trio's, Cursive's latest release, Mama, I'm Swollen, was surprisingly really, really good and I was excited to see them. Well, I was excited until I walked into the Granada, and found that the mess of trebely, metal-esque music that had leaked outside was actually Cursive.
In fact, I wasn't sure the band onstage was actually Cursive until they launched into "From the Hips," the single from Mama, I'm Swollen. And it sounded like shit: A muddled mess that carried throughout their set, notably with the bass and drums vibrating so loud that it drowned everything else out. Nearly inaudible were the intricate, angular guitars and Kasher's terrificaly morbid vocals. I recognized "The Martyr," a song I was obsessed with my senior year of high school, but only when it got to the chorus. It seems unfair to pan a band because of a venue's shortcomings, but there's something about hearing songs that you really like butchered by godawful mixing that makes you want to listen to put your fingers in your ears and mope.
| Nicole Reinertson |
The best thing any show can offer is to completely destroy your expectations. Go into a show and expect to hear a bunch of new songs, and the band will play almost exclusively stuff from their first four records. (Okay, this never happens, but Alkaline Trio did it, and it was one of the most thrilling concert experiences I've had in years.)
Alkaline Trio recently announced that their new record, This Addiction, is a "return to their punk roots." So, maybe their set list was effectively an offering of good faith. They opened with the title track from their new record, and then promptly announced: "This next song is called 'Armageddon.'" I had a flashback: Sixteen years old, waiting for fireworks to start at the Great Mall of the Great Plains months after discovering "punk rock" and, naturally, reading The Catcher in the Rye. That song was on repeat on my portable CD player. I think I may have yipped, and when they laid into "Mr. Chainsaw," another classic, I noticed a trend that would carry through the rest of the night. The teenagers hated the new stuff just as much as I did. Well, maybe they didn't hate it, but the cheers for "Fuck You Aurora," "Continental," and "As You Were" were deafening. Despite my years as a jaded asshole, my heart warmed like that of the Grinch, and grew three times its size! Yes, it's true, the kids are alright.
None of this would have mattered if it didn't look like the band was having a good time--and they looked like they were having a great time. It seemed like they hadn't played tracks from Maybe I'll Catch Fire and Goddamnit in years, and their enthusiasm was palpable. Nearly every song was welcomed just as enthusiastically. "This is a love song," Skiba announced before "Nose Over Tail," which played just as well in my memory of being seventeen as it did at twenty-four. There's something wonderul about lines like Your voice like the sound of sirens / To a house on fire / You're saving me. It's a little cheesy, but man, don't you want to feel that way about someone? That it was paired with "As You Were," one of Skiba's best bitter love songs, was the most exciting part of the night.
That is, until they closed the set proper with "'97," one of their earliest songs and one of their best. The encore made the night more unreal. Drummer Derek Grant moved to bass, Dan Adriano was on guitar, and Skiba took to the drums. They started with one of Adriano's tunes from the new record, "Fine," which was definitely not up to snuff with the some of the excellent songs he's contributed to the band over the years (however, they they did play one of Adriano's best, "Crawl," earlier in the set). Next up, Grant took over vocal duties for an out-of-nowhere, drop-dead-amazing cover of the Misfits' "Angelfuck," before Skiba returned to guitar and played the song everyone was chanting for: "Radio," a plea for a ex-lover to be electrocuted via radio falling into a bathtub. It's all very emo, for sure, but it's genuine.
On "Mr. Chainsaw," Matt Skiba sings, In case you're wondering we're singing / About growing up / About giving in. Regardless of age, everyone there seemed to have grown up with Alkaline Trio--or was growing up with their songs as part of the soundtrack of their teen years. Unlike a lot of pop-punk bands from the late '90s and early '00s who are all in their 30s and still singing about how great it is to be a teenager, Alkaline Trio isn't pandering to anyone. While some of their more recent ventures haven't worked, the songs Alkaline Trio wrote ten years ago are just as good as they were the first time any broken-hearted punk rock kid heard them. Nostalgia or no, it was a damn entertaining evening.
This is not quite a set list, but all of these songs were played and, if you avoided the gig because you thought they weren't gonna play anything before Crimson, well, you can now smack your forehead.
This Addiction
Armageddon
Mr. Chainsaw
We've Had Enough
Crawl
Emma
Fatally Yours
Fuck You Aurora
Sadie
This Could Be Love
Continental
100 Stories
As You Were
Nose Over Tail
97
Fine
Angelfuck
Radio
Nicole Reinertson
Nicole Reinertson
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I agree with the old stuff is awesome and the new stuff sucked. I actually thought they weren't going to play anything but their newer music and pretty much shit a brick when they played Armageddon. It was amazing, gotta say. I was totally yelling along with the music and I was very pleased with it all. Even though i left covered in sweat and beer. And got jumped on by various people trying to crowd surf. Overall I was very pleased! =]
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