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Archive for the ‘Ekko Astral’ Category

[ATTENDED: September 17, 2025] PUP

My son and I have seen Pup twice and have enjoyed both shows immensely.  I assume I’ll want to see them whenever they come around because they are so much fun.

This was the first time we were fairly close to the stage (we were one person from the barricade at the beginning of the night, although by the end we had been pushed around a bit.  And indeed, my son jumped in the pity later in the night.

This was a busy bill–3 bands, with Jeff Rosenstock playing an hour.  I was really impressed with the efficiency of the night (are you listening Wet Leg?).  15 minutes between Jeff Rosenstock leaving the stage and Pup taking over.

I realized that I hadn’t listened all that much to their new album, which was not a great plan going into a tour for the new album.  All Pup songs are catchy and fun, so it doesn’t really matter if you don’t know them–except that when you know them you can sing/scream at the top of your voice.

But it wasn’t all new songs at all.  They opened with a new song (the opening song of the album). (more…)

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[ATTENDED: September 17, 2025] Jeff Rosenstock

So I didn’t really know Jeff Rosenstock. I’d heard of him and I knew t hat he had done a lot of work with PUP AND I knew that people loved him, but he had completely slipped my radar.

But when he and his band came out, they were a ton of fun right from the get go.  And the crowd went bananas for them.

And he was very funny too.  Wearing orange shorts with a pink dye job on his hair (he said he had done it just before the show and it was still dripping down his neck).

They came out to the Friends theme and Jeff immediately told us to get to know the people around us.  But if we saw some fucking moron grope someone or get in someone’s face, get some other nice person and get that moron outta here.

And as one blurb says, the set was filled with fan favorites, singalongs, and chaos. (more…)

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[ATTENDED: September 17, 2025] Ekko Astral

We arrived at the venue plenty early and were right up near the barrier.  There was a giant “american” flag on stage, except the stripes were rainbow colored, the stars were pot leaves and the middle of the blue field said 666.  Amazing.

I had wanted to see Ekko Atral open for Ted Leo but I was late for that show.  So I was really psyched to be able to see them so soon.  And they were very clear about the rules: no bigotry of any kind would be tolerated.

And wow, what an opening.  We were right in front of bassist and singer Jael Holzman.  She was amazing and intense. Across the stage was guitarist Liam Hughes and he played the kind of noise guitar that I had to wonder how one even thinks of making sounds like that–and how he knew they would work so well.

On drums was Miri Tyler, playing loud and fast and acting almost like a distortion pedal for the overall sound. (more…)

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[ATTENDED: June 21, 2024] Ted Leo + Pharmacists / Ekko Astral

I saw Ted Leo + Pharmacists back in 2019 and really enjoyed the show.  At the time IW rote

Even though I like Ted Leo I really don’t know a lot of his songs–I’ve been more of a casual fan.  So I was delighted by the variety of sounds and styles he played from throughout his career.

Over the last five years I’ve wanted to see him again but for one reason or another I didn’t.  So when he announced a show at Union Transfer I grabbed a ticket.  I didn’t really give much thought to the fact that he was playing Shake the Sheets because I don’t really know any of his albums per se.  So I didn’t really care about that (It turns out when I saw him last time he played a bunch of songs from that album).

When the Isiliel show was announced for the same night I was quite torn.  I thought that the Ted Leo show would be more fun, but I didn’t know if Isiliel would ever come back, so I opted for that one. It ended at 10:30 and I had seen that most of the Ted Leo shows were ending around 11:30.  Since Union Transfer is about four block from PhilMOCA I decided to pop in and catch the end of Ted Leo and I’m really glad that I did.

So I missed the entire set from openers Ekko Astral (whom Ted praised very very highly and made me wish I had seen them–if I could have seen them in stead of Isenmor, that would have been amazing).  I’s like to make sure I see them again someday.

Luckily for me (but I would have hated this is I was there), Ted and the band didn’t go on until 9:40.  I just found out though that there were actually TWO opening bands, which explains the delay for Ted.

The middle opening act was (more…)

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