Say Anything at First Avenue, Minneapolis (17 July 2015)

Hard Girls (with Joe)

Opening up the show was San Jose’s Hard Girls. The trio (Morgan, Mike, and Max) played some punk rock songs from their latest A Thousand Surfaces (Asian Man Records)
… and in typical punk songs, many of these tracks were short bursts of energy. They were already on their fourth song (“Hot for the Halo”), 9 minutes into their set.



Highlight of their set was the closing song “The Quark”… you know “a song about subatomic particles?” Joe from Cymbals Eat Guitars joined them on the song to add a guitar boost to the music.

Cymbals Eat Guitars

In contrast, Cymbals Eat Guitars took their time with their 30-min set of only songs from their latest Lose (Barsuk Records), spacing out the tracks to almost jam-like proportion.



Singer Joe said that the last time CEG was at 7th Street/First Avenue, it was four years ago with Hooray For Earth
(technically they were at First Ave with The Thermals in Sept 2010 and Los Campesinos in May 2010, which we can proudly say, we were there). Despite having been on constant tour for the better part of their lives, Joe confessed that this will likely be his last Minneapolis show, saying that he might go back to college after this.



The best part of their show was for their set finale “Laramie”, which went on for about six minutes of extended guitar feedback and loops. If this is Cymbals Eat Guitars’ last ever Minneapolis show, they certainly ended on a high note.

Modern Baseball

Looking at how young the band Modern Baseball was on stage, I could have sworn they were only 18 years old, but in fact, over 21 (noting the non-“X” on underagers and the band even wrote songs about drinking “Tears Over Beers”). Based on their strong fanbase, who sang along to all their songs and started moshing consistently during “The Weekend” until “Your Graduation”, this band could have easily headlined their own show.



While many of these songs were old favorites from 2012’s Sports (Lame-O Records) and You’re Gonna Miss It All (Run For Cover Records), the Philadelphia band unveiled a new song called “Alpha Kappa Fall of Troy Part Deux”.



Just a side note, but recently Brendan Lukens of Modern Baseball contributed two songs (“Death 4 My Birthday” – Say Anything cover and “Stockholm” – Jason Isbell cover) to Funeral Sounds Presents: A Compilation for Casa Ruby, benefiting Casa Ruby, a Washington, D.C. area multicultural, bilingual LGBTQ+ resource center. You can support Casa Ruby at bandcamp.com.



Accompanying Say Anything on stage was a string quartet (featuring two violin players, a viola, and cellist). According to singer Max Bemis, the four classically trained performers only had two days before the tour started to learn their parts. While I think this is really cool, I feel sometime the strings were often overpowered by the loud guitars … perhaps they could arranged it so that all the other instruments could be silenced for a movement so we can really appreciate the sweeping strings.

Setlist

Most of the dedicated fans sang along to all the songs, including new songs, which made Bemis really happy. His singing style is often starting a line and letting his fans finish the rest, which is surprising when you hear that Bemis said they’ve never officially recorded or released “But a Fleeting Illness”, but fans already knew the song by heart.



The biggest hit of the night was, of course, for “Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too”, which immediately got a massive reaction when they heard the telephone ring from the stage. Fans from the balcony were running down to the dance floor to join the crowd.



For the double song encore, Bemis said that usually Tom DeLonge joins them on stage to sing/play on “Nibble Nibble”, but for some reasons or another, he could not make it last night. Then before “Ahhh… Men”, Bemis expressed, once again, that he was incredibly grateful for his loyal fanbase.



Say Anything’s album Hebrews is out now on Equal Vision Records. The record came out last year, but according to Bemis, it won’t be too long before the band will be back in town with a new record.