Freezepop at the Nether Bar, Minneapolis (18 July 2015)

The Electric Witch

DJ SLT kept music in the synthpop genre going after doors opened and between band sets, starting with duo Duck Duck Punch (Bryan & Trent) and followed by The Electric Witch (featuring singer Mary Bue in a mask). I had a hard time working out the songs for TEW, but I suspect many of those songs were taken from their latest We See the Shapes (Xero Music).

Dance Assault

Next was Dance Assault, lead by singer/synths Carson in cool shades with the help of drummer Kenneth and guitarist Jay. The trio played about six songs, mostly taken from their debut album Into the Light, including
“Feel It”, “Keep Me Sane”, and “The Power”.



Boston’s Freezepop (Liz, Sean, Robert, and Marie) was a lot of fun. You can just tell right away when they were doing their soundchecks, playfully keying in the first few notes of Prince’s “1999” (as you do when you are in his hometown), Van Halen’s “Jump” and The Smurfs Theme Song.



Also, if there was one thing you can take away from their show last night, it was that they never forgot to thank their fans. Can you believe it’s been fifteen years since their debut album Freezepop Forever originally came out?



I suspect when they were putting together their setlist, that they had so many requests for songs from their debut album, that they decided to put them all together in a block. It became a running joke, with Sean Drinkwater kept introducing those songs as “Let’s go back in time from our first album Freezepop Forever…” or “This is all the way back from our first album Freezepop Forever…” or “We’re going to do something from our first album…” This is good to hear, as some bands are sometime embarrassed and tend to not play any old songs (Metric, Camera Obscura to name a few bands that came to mind).



There was one early request from a Brian who asked them to play “Natural Causes”, followed by a new song called “Phantoms”, which required audience participation of singing back the word “phantoms“.

Freezepop

Singer Liz messed up on “テニスのボーイフレンド (Tennis Boyfriend)” and requested a ‘do over’. According to their banter, they also messed up (on a different song) in Chicago.



The rest of the show went on without any problems, even though their set changed from night to night and sometime had to play songs they haven’t rehearsed in a while.

Setlist

After the fake ‘going back stage’ (they were still on stage) and hearing the “Encore” chants, they came back to play a few more tracks. Based on all the singing, the biggest hit of the night was clearly “Less Talk More Rokk”… with its lyrics, “the music is loud/the kids are so young/all over the world/they wanna have fun… just give us more rokk“, serving as their anthem.



I thought that was the end of the show, especially when Robert “Bananas” started taking a photo of the audience, fans were shouting requests like “Super Sprode” …. which lead them to do an impromptu version of the song (well…. only after Brian found the correct beats/backing tracks on his laptop of course). During the chorus, fans threw on underwear on stage!



That wasn’t the end of it, they ended their entire show with the “Jem Theme” song, encouraging fans to sing along.



I got the feeling that the band have a close relationship to their fans, knowing their names and more than happy to play requests… and it’s that kind of personal interaction that creates a strong and loyal fanbase.