The Struts & Highly Suspect at First Ave, Minneapolis (17 Sep 2015)
After completely selling out the smaller 7th Street Entry, The Struts and Highly Suspect show in Minneapolis was quickly upgraded to the much larger-capacity main room.
The Struts Setlist
 Intro: Klaus Doldinger’s “Bastian’s Happy Flight”
|
Highly Suspect Setlist
|
The frenetic trio (Ryan Meyer – drums, vocals; Rich Meyer – bass, vocals; Johnny Stevens – guitar, vocals, synthesizer) not only rocked with their 50 min. set, they rawked, playing in support of their first full-length, Mister Asylum (on 300 Entertainment) and fans responded in kind, especially to ‘Bath Salts’, new single ‘Lydia’, and even the unreleased ‘Fire in Bedstuy’.
Singer Stevens was clearly having fun, calling out all the people in the crowd wearing their t-shirts and with ‘Lydia’ peaking at #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart, plan to hear much more from this diverse hard alternative threesome that can channel the muddiness of a Soundgarden one minute and the crunch of vintage Black Sabbath, the next.
Americans may have only heard of The Struts this year, but the truth is that the band has been around for at least five years now, complete with a debut single ‘I Just Know’ in 2012 and full length album Everybody Wants (Virgin/EMI) in 2014. However, as an introduction to America, they’ve only officially released one EP, Have You Heard to us and (perhaps smartly) decided to only play those particular songs (all four songs), and throwing in a few more from their debut album. With a total of seven songs (and one encore song), on paper should have only been, at best, a 40-minute set… but somehow the band managed to vamp out their set to nearly an hour. A typical Struts song is stretched from three minutes to about fifteen minutes!
Frontman Luke Spiller, despite undergoing vocal problems, was determined to give us the best show of our lives. Spiller said, “As you can hear, my voice is f**** tonight… Hope you are not disappointed.” Shortly after that announcement, he started screaming and singing to ‘Kiss This’. He actually sounded completely fine, and no one would have been the wiser if he hadn’t mention anything about his voice.
The rest of the show had Spiller undergoing three costume changes, which is always fun to watch. Spiller had the audience in his hands, often directing the crowd to do sing back competitions or sitting down/ready to pounce… and the audience loved it.
Before their last song, Spiller, once again, apologized for his voice, but promised to be “in top form next time” and then that they promised to play “two hours!”
The breakout U.K. band continues their US tour with some additional dates
|
10/14 Los Angeles, CA The Troubadour
10/17 Woodlands, TX KTBZ-FM Buzzfest 10/19 Atlanta, GA The Earl 10/20 Charlottesville, VA The Southern 10/21 Washington, DC Rock & Roll Hotel 10/23 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom 10/24 Philadelphia, PA The Foundry 10/25 Boston, MA The Sinclair 10/26 Buffalo, NY Iron Works 10/28 Nashville, TN The High Watt 10/29 St. Louis, MO Blueberry Hill-Duck Room 10/31 New Orleans, LA Voodoo Music 11/01 Dallas, TX Club Dada |
11/02 Austin, TX Stubb’s BBQ
11/04 Colorado Springs, CO Black Sheep 11/05 Denver, CO Marquis Theatre 11/08 Vancouver, BC Venue 11/09 Seattle, WA The Crocodile 11/10 Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom 11/11 Reno, NV Knitting Factory 11/13 Scottsdale, AZ Pub Rock 11/14 Las Vegas, NV Hard Rock Live Las Vegas 11/27 Toronto, ON Adelaide Hall 11/28 Montreal, QC Fairmount Theatre 11/29 Wilkes-Barre, PA Chandelier Lobby 12/01 Norfolk, VA Norva 12/02 Richmond, VA The National |
