Montclair, NJ – 15 Sep 2023
“I Need That Song; Those Trusty Chords Could Pull Me Through”
Despite my taste for whiskey over stouts and lagers, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for songs of love turned cold and beer gone warm. Alkaline Trio are largely responsible for that, and by the looks of this sell-out crowd on Friday night, I wasn’t the only one.
This was the first time the Chicago three-piece has come back to the Garden State since Matt Skiba left Blink-182 and the first time since Atom Willard took over duties behind the kit and the Alkaline acolytes were ready to see what these arrivals and departures could bring to the stage.
Even though The Wellmont Theater is known for its notoriously poor sound, there was an air of excitement overwhelming the always passionate Jersey crowd. The venue sold out, as many of the Trio’s faithful didn’t expect a chance to ever hear a setlist full of love gone bad and beer gone good again. With the opportunity presented to us, we were going to show up and show out. You can bet your ass we did just that.
I’d been lucky enough to catch opener Teen Mortgage 2 weeks back at Camp Punksylvania and couldn’t wait to experience the duo again. The band experimented with pedals as if they were a garage-punk Nikola Tesla. The effect-heavy set was brimming with songs about why you get high and lying to your boss, or at least that’s how frontman Jimi Guile explained them. The club’s unbalanced sound made deciphering lyrics a difficult prospect, but musically, I was, once again, blown away by Teen Mortgage.
With just drums, guitars, vocals and venom the pair fill the theater with tinnitus and technical musicianship. For a set interspersed with fun and silly quotes from Scott Steiner to Donnie Darko and Wii holding patterns, the band’s set was a serious treat thanks to Guile’s raucous vocals and pedal-heavy guitar combined with the punishing and skilled rhythms from drummer Ed Barakauskas. Teen Mortgage didn’t move around the stage, and didn’t need to because their sound and presence commanded the audience’s full attention and full investment in what was coming out of the speakers thanks to this duo.
The stationary performance of Teen Mortgage stood in glaring contrast to the extremely animated frontman of Canada’s Home Front. The post-punk, new-wave genre bending imports soaked the venue in throwback vibes, and they did it so god damned well. Their uncanny ability to overcome the venue’s sound quality and the crowd’s unfamiliarity was impressive and contagious, which may be why the next note stuck out so far. There was something very professional wrestling about the performance. Frontman Graeme McKinnon held the crowd in the palm of his hand when he wanted to, but too often he came off more like a caricature thought up by Vince McMahon in the early 90’s to play the role of punk rocker. His high kicks and headbutting the microphone seemed choreographed and insincere to me and took away from my ability to enjoy the fantastic sound being put out. Saying a wrestling match is scripted isn’t at all a knock on the performers athletic abilities and my saying Home Front was overly choreographed to the point of distraction isn’t meant to take anything away from the sound. It didn’t need to be this over the top and it didn’t need to feature so many high kicks, but if you close your eyes this was a strong and stunning introduction to the band.
Between sets, the spacious GA floor began closing in, extra security lined the barricades and lights went down to with roar. The band may have changed line ups a few times throughout its long career but Matt Skiba, Dan Andriano and Atom Willard all played with such passion and fun that it’s easy to see why they are loved and respected within the punk genre. The audience sang along to all the songs adjusting to Willard’s harder and faster natural tempos.
Launching right in with “Private Eye,” the trio spread things out evenly with tracks from 9 albums being performed over the course of the set. There wasn’t a lot of mid-set banter as the band cruised through 19 tracks brilliantly, letting the well-loved lyrics engage the crowd more than any brief anecdotes ever could have. Vocal chords shredded as the inclusive setlist guaranteed all were going to be leaving tonight a bit hoarse, and better for it.
The crowd was comforted by the lyrics we’d been singing for decades, swaddled in the romance and macabre Alkaline brings to their music. When the Chicago legends closed out the set with “This Could Be Love” we were a pushed tight, sweaty mess of flesh and counting digits high in the air. The band may have slinked off stage at that point, but nobody was leaving before concert peek-a-boo brought the band back for an encore of “Warbrain” and “Radio.”
This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen Alkaline, this certainly will not be my last. Like almost everyone else in attendance that night, we will continue coming back to see the three-piece for as long as they can keep putting on top-notch shows like this one.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/