[DID NOT ATTEND: September 29, 2023] Explosions in the Sky / Draag Me
Explosions in the Sky twice. After that second show, I promised myself that I would see them any time they toured. It has been a few years and they announced their new tour was called The End. It was wildly speculated that they were breaking up after it (and why wouldn’t people speculate about that). So I made sure to buy a ticket immediately.
But after months of speculation, it was revealed that The End is just the name of their new album. It doesn’t make the tour any less exciting, but it leaves a but of a bad taste.
This is the largest venue that I would have seen them play at–and I wasn’t all that excited about that either.
Well, when Margaret Glaspy announced that she was playing a show at Underground Arts on the same night, at first I was bummed to miss her. Then I decided that I had seen Margaret twice, but both were short shows and that I’d really like to see her headline.
So, yes, I’m giving EITS a pass. It’s kind of a shame that bands aren’t postponing shows anymore (bite your tongue).
EITS said that they’d be having local bands open for them throughout this tour. According to Pitchfork:
Draag Me started as the solo project of Zack Schwartz, one of the driving forces behind Philadelphia psych band Spirit of the Beehive. His first record under the Draag Me moniker, i am gambling with my life, was a collection of warm, hazy electro-pop with an undercurrent of anxiety. With idle time during the pandemic, Schwartz started emailing scraps of songs to his Beehive bandmate Corey Wichlin, including some taken from Beehive’s ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH sessions. The two passed files back and forth, arranging and mangling them until full compositions emerged, ones more metallic and jittery than their predecessors.
The music is weird an unsettling–chopped up and stripped down. It’s the kind of music that would be really hard to play live if it wasn’t all prerecorded in some way. I’m curious how well they will be received–although a Philly show with a Philly band should probably be okay. Interestingly, they are also opening for DIIV in Jersey City on Nov 1. I don’t know DIIV at all, but I wonder how well they work with these two different bands.
I Just Read About That... 