Chameleons at Varsity Theater, Minneapolis (April 7, 2026)

When Mark “Vox” Burgess of Chameleons spoke to us last month, he was clear: while he’s proud of songwriting and their illustrious recording career, they prize consistent and compelling performance over all else. He wanted people to leave the show with a feeling of connection and inspiration — that the rest of the city missed out for not being there. Even after that heads-up, I was unprepared for the intensity of the post-punk five piece, doing their first show in two months, kicking off their North American tour in Minneapolis.

The Varsity Theater, for all its foibles, sounds magnificent. The interlocking lead guitars of Reg Smithies and Stephen Rice, Vox’s driving bass and soaring, pleading vocals, and even the sweeping keys of Todd Demma (politely seated on a loft at the back of the stage) — every piece of it sounded clear and urgent. Vox would exchange bass guitar for a bright-sounding twelve-string, and even finished the show empty-handed (as Demma stepped down from his platform and took over that acoustic). After repeated listens to this band on record (or Burgess alone, in acoustic performances on YouTube), I was surprised with the active rock-star antics at center stage. The Chameleons’ frontman clearly enjoys being a frontman, and the crowd responded to him with that same energy — rocking head-nods from some, but animated jumping and cheering from others in the balcony while I stopped up there to take high-angle shots.

The set was evenly balanced from their 80s classics (Script of the Bridge, What Does Anything Mean? Basically) to 2025’s Arctic Moon. “Feels Like the End of the World” was introduced with a commentary on the events of the day — as a band, they’d discussed whether to play “End of the World” when the actual end of the world is being threatened? — but ultimately the band determined that, at the end of the world, why not play “End of the World”? (For future archaeologists: Tuesday’s show coincided with the American President’s threat to commit genocide against Iran’s 90 million people, a threat he walked back two weeks.) Just as the end of 1985’s “Singing Rule Britannia (While the Walls Close In)” quoted the Beatles’ “She Said She Said” (“I know what it’s like to be dead”), Vox pulled lines from “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” (The Smiths) and “Eleanor Rigby” (The Beatles, again) and “Be My Wife” (David Bowie) at various points. Just as he said in our interview: while the Chameleons are fiercely original and profoundly influential, nothing’s “original”. Everyone’s drawing from their own musical heroes. Nearly two hours after they started, “Don’t Fall” set a perfectly paranoid-but-defiant tone to close the show.

North Carolina soul-minded-shoe-gazers The Veldt opened, setting a totally appropriate mood. They had the misfortune of having their drummer break an ankle two days before the tour started, so they were a five-piece, with four guitars and one bass. Lead singer Daniel Chavis recalled playing First Avenue with the Jesus and Mary Chain, “back when I had hair, and a smaller prostate”. (Chavis also quoted other songs in the runout sections of his band’s: “Love is a Battlefield” and “Ooh Child”.) They shared their admiration for the people of Minnesota, but not as directly as Chameleons, who started their show with a few minutes of tribute to Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Indeed, the whole city missed out on quite a show. 

 

 

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