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Archive for the ‘Union Transfer’ Category

[ATTENDED: November 2, 2021] BLACKSTARKIDS

The weird thing about seeing an artist who is new and very young is that her opening bands need to be (relatively) newer and younger.  And so, when seeing an artist like Beabadoobie who has one album out and who was born in you’re going to get openers who are gasp, probably teenagers.

I don’t know why it bugs me so much to be late for a show…especially when I don’t know the opening act.  I just like to arrive early, pick the spot I want and get psyched for he show.  For some reason, I was running late for this show and I wound up walking in after BLACKSTARKIDS had started.

There were five members on stage, but the core of the band is TyFaizon and The Babe Gabe–the main songwriters–and Deiondre acting as producer.  They all rap and sing leads (there was also a keyboardist and a drummer).

Their music is genre defying, being equally inspired by indie rock, hip hop and pop culture.  So a song like “PALS” has rapped verses (from all three of them, I think) and then a super catchy chorus with lovely backing ahhs. (more…)

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[ATTENDED: October 29, 2021] Mannequin Pussy

I had just seen Mannequin Pussy open or Japanese Breakfast back in August.  And they were great.  But there’s nothing like seeing a band as the headliner.

The unthinkable happened a few days before our show–all of the bands gear and merch were stolen while they were in Ohio.

Mannequin Pussy has a pretty unique sound, so I’m sure they’ve customized a lot of their gear.  But they decided to carry on.  The opening bands loaned them so gear and Mannequin Pussy thrived.  The crowd also helped with a few “Fuck Ohio” chants.

They broadcast Meek Mill’s “Dreams and Nightmares (Intro)” as a tension-building set up for their performance.

The set was similar to their opening set with Japanese Breakfast, but it was longer and there were a couple of substitutions.

It was a great mix of the raging and the chill.  The band really knows how to get a crowd going, often playing a few blistering punk tracks in a row to get the crowd into a frenzy and then calming things down, all the better to get the crowd going again. (more…)

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[ATTENDED: October 29, 2021] Angel Du$t

Angel Du$t is considered a supergroup (according to Wikipedia).  At the time, I hadn’t heard of either of the bands that the members came from (Turnstile and Trapped Under Ice).  Since then, Turnstile has absolutely blown up all over the place.

I’ve been wanting to see Turnstile, but I guess I’ve already seen 3/5 of them [Daniel Fang — drums ; Brendan Yates – rhythm guitar ; Pat McCrory – lead guitar].  The two guys from Trapped Under Ice were Justice Tripp – lead vocals and Jeff Caffey bass.

I didn’t know anything about the band and even the write about up them said that they defied expectations of their other bands. (more…)

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[ATTENDED: October 29, 2021] Pinkshift

I hadn’t heard of Pinkshift (I don’t quite understand the name) before this show, but holy cow they blew me away.

Pinkshift is from Baltimore and they play a great mix of grunge and punk all coordinated by lead singer Ashrita Kumar.

Kumar is an amazing front woman, channeling her anger and aggression into an amazing set of songs.  It was awesome seeing a young Indian American woman fronting a punk band and telling the crowd what to do.

Guitarist Paul Vallejo and bassist Erich Weinroth were locked in step as they rocked.  And drummer Myron Houngbedji was completely intense

The first two songs were intense with Ashrita stalking he stage and commanding the crowd. (more…)

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[ATTENDED: October 22, 2021] Tigers Jaw

I had planned to check out Tigers Jaw at a small club in New Hope, but the show kept getting cancelled.  All I really knew about them was a Tiny Desk Concert they did that I really liked.  There were two of them and they wrote catchy poppy punk songs.

Little did I know they’ve had tumultuous line up changes since their early days in Scranton, PA.

Back in 2014 3/5 of the band left, leaving only Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins.  Their 2017 album, Spin was recorded as a duo.  But for I Won’t Care How You Remember Me, they added the touring bassist and drummer the band to record the album.

And for the tour, they added two more members.  So this show proved to be a lot bigger, louder and dancier than I expected.

(more…)

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[ATTENDED: October 22, 2021] Kississippi

Kississippi has one of my favorite band names of recent years.  I wasn’t even sure if I liked them, I just knew I liked the name.

And here they were opening for Tigers Jaw (something of a musical mismatch because they tend to play a bit more synth poppy compared to Tigers Jaw’s heavier sound).

Kississippi is the solo project of Philadelphian Zoe Allaire Reynolds.  She’s released a few albums and EPs, but for this show, she was mostly touring her latest album Mood Ring which is a bit more upbeat than her previous releases.

I didn’t catch any of the band member names, but her bassist was outstanding.  They had a great sound coupled with a great look [I have since learned their name is Alyssa Milman (they/them)].  Zoe herself was a fun front woman.  I especially enjoyed the “YMCA” type of dance she made for “We’re So In Tune” (you can imagine it, I’m sure). (more…)

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[ATTENDED: October 22, 2021] Total Rubbish

I had planned to check out Tigers Jaw at a small club in New Hope, but the show kept getting cancelled.  All I really knew about them was a Tiny Desk Concert they did that I really liked.  There were two of them and they wrote catchy poppy punk songs.  Their opening act was supposed to be Kayleigh Goldsworthy who is more or less a folk singer.  So I assumed that’s what kind of show this would be.

The opening band at Union Transfer was Total Rubbish, a new band based in Philly.  They have one EP out called Triple Negative.

The four young women took the stage and proceeded to play some great noisy grungey shoegazey rock.  It was hard to tell exactly what the dynamic should be because they weren’t mixed all that great.  The vocals were kind of buried (or maybe I was too close to the stage).  (more…)

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[ATTENDED: October 21, 2021] Lucy Dacus

Lucy Dacus announced that she’d be playing Philly on the birthday of someone in my family.  Clearly I wasn’t going to go to the show.

That sold out pretty quickly and she announced another show the next night.   I grabbed tickets immediately.

I’ve seen Lucy two and a half times already (she played Newport Folk Festival but we only saw a couple of songs).

The only problem was that I didn’t know her new album very well yet.  The songs I knew I liked, but I hadn’t really dived into the rest of it.  And this set was heavy on the Home Video. (more…)

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[ATTENDED: October 21, 2021] Bartees Strange

Lucy Dacus announced that she’d be playing Philly on the birthday of someone in my family.  Clearly I wasn’t going to go to the show.  Shamir was opening that show.

That sold out pretty quickly and she announced another show the next night.  For some reason Shamir wasn’t going to open, but instead it would be Bartees Strange.  I have really loved Bartees Strange’s album and his Tiny Desk Home Concert was great.  So I was really excited to see him–I’m sure I’ll see Shamir again some day.

Bartees started the night with a solo rendition of “Far.”  It was good, and showed off his voice, but I was a little concerned that he was going to be by himself.

But I needn’t have worried, as the band barreled out for a rocking “Mustang.”  It got us all moving and showed off how great his band is. (more…)

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[POSTPONED: October 15, 2021] Waxahatchee / OHMME [rescheduled from April 14 and October 5, 2020 and May 16, 2021]

indexOriginally this concert featured support from OHMME, which was half the reason I wanted to see this show and not one of the other shows.  For whatever reason, OHMME was no longer at this show, and support was now from Katy Kirby, who has a very catchy song called “Traffic!” and plays some lovely folk songs.

This show has been postponed so many times it is ridiculous.  It was finally rescheduled on the night before a special day in our house.  So, although I had two tickets, S. wasn’t going to go.  Then on October 15, just hours before they were supposed to go on stage for their first sold out show at Union Transfer, they forwarded this message:

Waxahatchee has postponed the last few shows of their tour including the Philadelphia dates on October 15 & 19.

We are confirming new dates right now and will send out those details in a few days.

Your tickets will be good for the new date (no need to do anything). If you cannot make the new date, we will be happy to refund you, however, we ask that all requests be made after the new date is announced.

From the band: “This morning, a member of our touring party tested positive for Covid. The rest of the band/crew have tested negative, but out of an abundance of caution, we have to postone these last 4 shows of our 6+ week tour. We hope to be able to reschedule them for early in the new year.”

Thank you.

— xo UT

This one worked in my favor.  And I’m looking forward to that rescheduled show next year.

wxa

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