Concert Review: Catbite/NNAMDÏ/Jeff Rosenstock – “Live in Denver”

Summit Music Hall – 23 JUN 2022

Despite being mostly interested in on of the opening bands, Rosenstock reminded me why he not one to b ignored.

I came to see Catbite. I’ll be honest about that. Not that I don’t love Jeff Rosenstock’s Worry, POST-, and No Dream. But I just love Catbite’s Nice One even more. So it was an exciting concert all around. Catbite kicked the door down with an amazing set full of absolutely electric energy. For, as charming as Brittany Luna is over social media and her lyrics, she’s even more captivating and impossible to resist when you see her on stage. Her spirit, her energy, even her sense of style is just wildly fun.

Catbite put in an excellent set of songs from both their self-titled debut and its follow up, along with a cover of No Doubt’s “Sunday Morning.” In all of the band’s videos, Luna plays keyboards in addition to singing, but they seem to have brought a separate keyboardist on tour to allow Luna to focus on singing and interacting with the audience. The band also did a great job of introducing audience participation, particularly during “Scratch Me Up” where they encouraged the audience to scratch the air like a cat that’s “making biscuits.”

NNAMDÏ was an incredibly talented musician, but I fail to see how he fits into the show. Catbite makes sense as Rosenstock made his name in ska bands The Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Bomb the Music Industry and his most recent album, Ska Dream, is a ska re-recording of his album before that, No Dream. So it makes a lot of sense to have a ska band open for Rosenstock. What makes less sense is to sandwich in between Catbite and Rosenstock an experimental multi-instrumentalist playing an eclectic mix of funk, world, soul, rock, and avant-garde pop music. NNAMDÏ was definitely an artist I could have appreciated in a different context paired with more similar artists. If I was here to see Medeski, Martin, and Wood, for example, I could really get into what NNAMDÏ was doing. But between what are, more or less , two ska acts, NNAMDÏ was too big of a shift in tone to really enjoy.

The big question on my mind, and I imagine a lot of other people’s minds, going into Jeff Rosenstock was “Will he play the songs from No Dream in their original style or in the Ska Dreams style?” The answer to that question was, basically, neither.It felt like a combination of the two but with more emphasis on the ska versions. During one of my favorites, “9/10,” Rosenstock brought Luna up onto the stage to sing it with him, which was an inspired choice. The slow ska rendition of this tune just added to the sense of chaos in the show. Rosenstock played almost nothing in the actual way it’s played on the studio albums. It was a wildly different experience with an artist that was clearly still the same person but with a completely different energy, as if showing off different sides of himself.

The aging punk that I am, I chose to sit in the back for most of Rosenstock’s set but still jumped up for a few of my favorites like “NO TIME” and “**BNB off the new album. Still, even from the back of the room, Rosenstock’s whole vibe is infectious and charming as hell.Even though I was there for Catbite first and foremost, Rosenstock reminded me of why I need to re-listen to his catalogue, and to make sure to catch him again next time he’s in town.