Simple Plan at Armory, Minneapolis (August 19, 2025)

The Warped Tour may not be visiting the Twin Cities this year, but a few veterans of the traveling music festival paid a visit to the Armory.

LØLØ aka Lauren Mandel was the first to take the stage to “Somewhere over the Rainbow” Then she kicked off her early set with “faceplant,” a song inspired by a fall she had that involved breaking her nose, chin and jaw.

Like the headliner, LØLØ is from Canada, Toronto, exactly. She is supporting her debut album Falling for Robots and Wishing I Was One, and played a few songs from it like “2 of us,” “DON’T!” and “omg” She also played a new song “The devil wears converse” and “hurt less” which got a big approval from the crowd. A personal favorite was the final song “hot girls in hell” which started with a single strumming guitar and ended with a furious rant.

Next up was 3OH!3, which is (if you didn’t know) the area code for the Denver and Boulder region. 3OH!3 is a duo of Sean Foreman and Nathaniel Motte, who bonded at the University of Colorado in Boulder over their love of rap and pop music.

3OH!3 walked onto the stage with strands of Dire Strait’s “I Want My MTV”, but instead of Sting singing the signature phrase, it was 3OH!3 singing “I want my three oh three.” Then things got pretty hard core the first song “PunkB*tch.” They then joked that they were 21 Pilots before launching into “Double Vision” which had the crowd jumping up and down, which I found to be a little unnerving to have a concrete floor feel more like a trampoline.

Foreman then complimented the venue, saying, “It feels like we’re outside even though we’re inside.” They then joked that the reason for their neon costumes is they wanted to be seen.

Bowling for Soup next took the stage to their own theme song, then launching into “Girl All the Bad Guys Want.”

I have to say that if you are in a bad mood, you won’t be after seeing Bowling for Soup. They had the shortest setlist of the four bands of the evening. But that gave them plenty of time to joke with the crowd and segue (or veer) off to points unknown. Two favorite segues:

1. Lead singer Jaret Reddick brought the set to a halt to have a conversation with a fan in the front row. Reddick couldn’t read the fan’s written sign, and after bringing the sign closer to his line of vision, Reddick saw that the sign was intended for the headliner.
2. Reddick, drummer Gary Wiseman and bassist Rob Felicetti stopped in the middle of “Punk Rock 101” to go to different parts of the stage so fans could take better pictures of them with their cellphones all to Hanson’s “Mmmbob.”

Before finishing with “1985” Reddick made a note about the importance of mental health and also mentioned Bowling for Soup had swab stations set up at the venue to check for bone marrow transplant matches, which so far has resulted in 70 matches with over 30 lives saved.

After three hours, Simple Plan took the stage with “I’d Do Anything,” which lead singer Pierre Bouvier described as “old school shit.”

Twenty-five years is a long time for a band, but what is it in pop punk years? Whatever the case, Simple Plan is on the road with some of their friends with Bigger Than You Think! Tour to mark the anniversary.

I have to say they had one of the nicer setups for a venue of this size. The stage wasn’t elaborate, but it had a giant LED screen behind them queued to each song, whether to show the lyrics for “Jump” and “Addicted” or to show old clips of dancing couples like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire to “Can’t Keep My Hands off You.”

A personal highlight was when they invited fellow Canadian LØLØ back on stage to sing a duet “Jet Lag.” It can get overlooked with the LED screens, confetti and screeching guitars, but both singers have great voices and there was a nice symbiotic blend of two singers crossing paths at far-flung airport terminals or the vast stage of the Armory.

Note: We Hear Music was not granted access to photograph Simple Plan.