Concert Review: Taking Back Sunday Holiday Spectacular with Straylight Run and Playing Dead (Night 2)

Starland Ballroom, Sayreville, NJ – 11 Dec 2021

An energy I wish could be bottled

For seven of the last eight years Taking Back Sunday hosted their Holiday Spectacular show at Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ, but after missing 2020 iteration over the pandemic, this year had an aura of more to it.  For a band that blew up 20 years ago, whose fans years ago traded their carabiners for car seats, this could have easily felt like old hat, but you could sense an energy in the line, at the bar, in the crowd, it was as if we all took a trip back in time and relived the romance of our first show.  

Nostalgia won out, and for a bunch of 30-40 something weirdos who had once glommed onto the idea of saying sorry for someone else’s act of violence, this return to relative normalcy was cathartic and perfect and every other superlative that’s escaping my pen.  

Long Island’s Playing Dead opened the show, proudly displaying the influence early 00’s juggernauts like TBS can still have today.  The six-piece came out and immediately impressed with hook-laden rippers like “Back to The Show.” I’d never seen or even heard about Playing Dead, but holy shit, I certainly will be paying attention now. Playing Dead is listed on YouTube as a quartet, but there were definitely six people performing on stage throughout their set and I’m having a hard time tracking down the official who’s who in the band, and in the interest of brevity, I’ll focus on aesthetics and performance over personalized platitudes.  

The first thing I noticed immediately upon the band taking the stage was the glorious facial hair of their bassist.  I don’t mean the guy was moderately mustachioed, I mean this legend wore the sort of epic beard that would make the dudes in Clutch swoon.  The beautifully harmonized voices of the bands male/female dual vocalists brought a depth and contrast so badly missing from much of the current crop of artists.  Behind the kit sat an energetic and powerful drummer keeping the band blistering through their 30 minute set, while Playing Dead’s lead guitarist shredded through his solos and melodies with a ferocity that made me think his Irish drinking cap would fly into the depths of the pit at any moment. But throughout all of the precision and passion of the band’s eight songs, the keyboardist in the Kid Dynamite hoodie had the crowd in the palm of his charismatic hands.  It’s not often that an opener shows up and tears grizzled punks and scenesters away from the overpriced IPAs at venue bars, but Playing Dead left the bartenders with nothing to do as the crowd was caught up in the enchantment and began to push their way closer to get a look at what will likely be the next favorite act for many of us. Personally speaking I can not wait for the soon to be released EP (and hey, Playing Dead, if you’re reading this and wanted to send in a review copy, I certainly wouldn’t mind).

While Playing Dead proved a hard act to follow, personal sentiment dictated Straylight Run was going to be the best part of my night the moment we bought tickets.  See, SR means more to me than most artists ever will.  In 2005, at the Bamboozle festival in Asbury Park, my girlfriend and I stood, pushed up against the wall at the Paramount Theater as Straylight Run closed their set with “Existentialism on Prom Night.”  It was seconds later, we decided that would be the first song we would dance to if we got married.  Two years, five months and two weeks later, we did just that.  To me, that song and this band will always represent the best decisions I’ve ever made. That was also the first and only time we had gotten to see them perform live before Michelle left in 2008 and their eventual breakup in 2010, and until this week, they had not graced any stages in 12 years.  

They gathered no rust in that time though, as the band came out, and immediately crushed opener “Mistakes We Knew We Were Making.” For the entirety of the set, the band demonstrated the excellence of their musical execution.  Every song seemed fresh, every note impassioned, every word sincere.  Nathan Cogan, Shaun Cooper and John Nolan did not appear to put any effort into conserving their energy despite knowing they’d be back to perform with TBS after this set closed out.  Instead, John proved himself to still be one of the most emotive vocalists, not only in the scene but in the history of music.  While the band skipped everything from 2007’s The Needles The Space, nobody seemed to mind, instead the crowd basked and joined in as the Nolan siblings belted out much of the 2004 self-titled debut, including crowd favorites “Another Word For Desperate,” “The Tension and The Terror,” and the only harmonized directions around pre-GPS Baldwin, NY “Your Name Here (Sunrise Highway).”  

The band launched into the hand clapping, foot stomping “Hands in The Sky (Big Shot)” which was truly the first glimpse of the energy in the room, as the crowd worked itself into a frenetic pace.  Closing the set out, as anticipated, was the aforementioned “Existentialism on Prom Night,” although to be honest, I wouldn’t have noticed if the roof collapsed. I was too busy singing into the crown of my still-perfect bride’s head.  

After a quick costume change that saw John Nolan forgo his plaid button up for an unbuttoned button-up and Shaun ditch his matching flannel for a dapper smoking jacket, the two returned to the stage, accompanied by the rest of Taking Back Sunday.  Frontman Adam Lazarra, has never been accused of subdued performances, but the self professed addict for dramatics was on a whole new level Saturday night.  From the second the band kicked down the door with Canadian melodrama favorite “What It Feels Like To Be A Ghost,” Lazarra must have stepped on every inch of the stage hundreds of times with the way he paces back and forth, aft and fore swinging the mic with proficiency deserving of a rivals snarky t-shirt. 

Lazarra’s stage presence is part-revivalist preacher, part-70’s rock god, and he embraces the worship with a tongue in cheek fervor.  While so many of his contemporaries want to get the crowd’s energy through their own resolution to perfection, Lazarra appears to know that we are going to have a good time if he is having fun up there.  He’s up there for us by being up there for himself and his bandmates.  

The scene vets blasted their way through an even mix of classics off the first three records while the crowd didn’t seem to take a single breather, as crowd surfing and pushing and shoving in the pit went wire to wire. 

Tell All Your Friends was featured on “Cute Without the E” and “Great Romances of the 20th Century,” while Where You Want To Be got some love with “Set Phasers to Stun” and “Decade Under the Influence.” Louder Now was represented with “Liar (Takes One To Know One)” and “Twenty Twenty Surgery.”

But it wasn’t just the classics, Tidal Wave got a little play, along with the recently released Weezer cover “My Name Is Jonas”, which was followed by the unexpected rendition of “El Scorcho” before a request via sing along from the crowd led the band to step out of tis comfort zone for the unrehearsed classic “This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know),” performed perfectly from where I was standing.  An impromptu interlude as Adam and Nathan teamed up for the chorus from Boyz II Men’s “End Of The Road” to let us know the set was coming to a close before slamming through set closer “MakeDamnSure.” Absolutely phenomenal set.

My wife and I made our exit and circumnavigated the parking lot, dodging the group photos and long goodbyes, watching as so many of us tried to prolong this feeling we had forgotten as we unintentionally walked away from the bands, music and scene that meant so much to us 15 years ago.  After the 2020 shit-show, we needed all of this.  The catharsis, the energy, the community had all been taken for granted for so long.  Luckily, one of the upsides to this mess we have lived through the last two years, is this reawakened passion we sort of lost with age. I don’t think that’ll be going away for any of us any time soon.