[ATTENDED: August 26, 2017] Dark Thoughts
Dark Thoughts are a Philly band who play really melodic and fast punk. They remind me (and a lot of other people) of the Ramones, but there’s a kind of British punk sound in the vocals and an overall poppiness that really belies their name (although their song titles are pretty nihilistic).
Dark Thoughts is Amy on bass, Daniel on Drums and Jim on guitar and vocals. Their album (which you can hear on bandcamp) has 12 songs in 20 minutes (and a EP with about 6 more minutes of different takes of 4 of those songs). They played for about 20 minutes and the whole crowd (especially me) was really into it. I’m fairly certain if there had been more people there would have been a lot of slam dancing. A few people tried to get something started but here just weren’t enough bodies.
Jim was a charming front man, making some jokes (while those two drink cider I’m going to stand here and do nothing) but also being sincere in his encouragement that we get involved in the J20 protest organization.
I loved watching how fast Jim’s strumming hand flew over the strings. As well as how quickly Daniel drummed–great speedy punk tempos.
Since Amy was right in front of me I was able to watch her play some tight riffs really fast as well.
And tight they were. A number of their songs have sudden sharp stops and they were right on it.
I’m not sure what order their set was, although i assume they played all of the songs from the record. I recognized “Identity Crisis,” and I’m sure the other songs were pretty clear too.
I highly encourage seeing them if you like punk. And I really hope they put some more music out soon.
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