I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: February 28, 2026] Her New Knife

Mitski announced a series of shows in New York City.  Then four days before this show, she announced this show. I couldn’t believe I was able to get tickets.  The way it was displayed it looked like Her New Knife was the name of the tour.  I didn’t realize they were a band until I looked them up.

So Her New Knife is a band from Philadelphia.  They are categorized as shoegaze although I don’t really hear it.  They’re more of a noise band.  At least they were live.

The guitarist/singer was making lots of interesting scratchy sounds with the guitar.  The drummer was hitting lots of splashing cymbals.  And the singer was whisper/mumbling.

There could not possibly have been a more divergent band from Mitski to open for her.  My wife even asked if maybe the band was related to her and that’s why she picked them (my wife didn’t like them but I did).  It turned out later that Mitski said that Her New Knife was favorite band at the moment.  How about that.

Some of the songs were slower with interesting tunings on the guitar.  The second guitarist also played some big crashing chords and delicate harmonics.  The one constant was the bass, which I really liked the sound of.  On a couple of songs the bassline really stood out.

I couldn’t decide if they were a hard to understand band or if they were mic’d badly.  I genuinely couldn’t understand a thing the singer sang or said (he spoke a few times and the only thing I understood was “Mitski”).  I have no idea what songs they played.  No one posted the setlist on setlist and my clips are muddy enough that I can’t tell if the songs were from their recent EP or what.

I was very intrigued by the sounds that the band was making and I would like to see them again up closer to really see what’s going on.  The online community seems to really like them, so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until I see them again.  And since they’re a Philly band, I suspect they’ll be opening for someone I want to see in the not too distant future.