Friday night was a triple bill of both emo and pop/punk bands at the Riviera that featured Motion City Soundtrack, Say Anything, and Sincere Engineer. The place was absolutely packed, even before the first band went on!
First up was Sincere Engineer. Hailing from right here in Chicago, Sincere Engineer is a pop punk band of the highest caliber. Led by vocalist/guitarist, Deanna Belos, the band has three albums under their belts with a fourth one on the way, and all of them are amazing pop punk records. Their songs are super energetic and catchy as hell. You can’t help but sing along to them all. The band has been touring frequently the past couple of years and that’s only made them even better performers and they really are a main event level band already and mark my words, they’ll be headlining places like Riviera before you know it instead of being the opening band. The band sounded amazing, and this was despite the fact that Deanna was losing her voice and struggling with it, but the crowd just sang along to all the songs even more to help her out. While it must have been a bummer to lose half your voice at your hometown show, it didn’t take away from the energetic and super fun performance . They played for a half hour and believe me there wasn’t a person in that building that didn’t wish they were given more time. It was great to have them play here again and we all can’t wait for them to do it again.
Say Anything were up next. They opened with “Spores” which is a more subdued song that was just guitar and vocals. It was an interesting way to start the show and was like lighting a fuse and watching it burn until the fireworks go off and they got to “Shiksa”, which set the pace for the rest of their hour long set. They played one catchy emo tune after another and the fans ate it up like candy. People were singing along, girls were swooning, guys were swooning, people were smiling, it was a really good time and a very strong performance. The band is celebrating a quarter century together, which is scary as an old timer like myself thinks of them as a “new band”!
Motion City Soundtrack have been around even longer than 25 years, which seems impossible for a “new band”, but here we are, and I’m clearly a dinosaur! Their songs are mainly mid tempo and even more melodic and they’re very obviously one of the top level emo bands. Their songs were very catchy and the fans loved every minute of it. The fans also seemed to know the words to pretty much every song. The band didn’t spent a lot of time talking between songs, they pretty. much blasted through a 19 song set that never let off the gas pedal. It was a good time and impossible not to enjoy it, even if you weren’t an existing fan.
The band played for close to 90 minutes and there wasn’t a dull moment in the set, in fact the crowd wanted even more but sadly it was curfew and time to go, but the show was a flawless evening of fun performances.
