Swayed by the Cool

By Matt Beshear

The Sunday before last, a great concert went down at The Venue featuring Fake Problems, The Menzingers, and headliner Gaslight Anthem. And like so many concerts I’ve been to this year, the attendance was thin, but the show was memorable for many reasons.

Kicking things off was a band HPR profiled the week of the concert, Fake Problems. Hailing from Naples, Florida, Fake Problems have been picking up some steam and released their second record, “It’s Great to be Alive,” last year on SideOneDummy.

Even though they’ve been together for years, it’s amazing how young they look in person. Once they started playing, though, it was impressive how mature sounding they are. Their 30 minute set was peppered with some of their older material, which comes off like country-punk on disc, as well as new, poppier songs from their upcoming release “Real Ghost Caught on Tape.”

The second band was The Menzingers from Scranton, PA. One thing is sure, they’ve obviously become very annoyed with references to The Office because it was one of the first things that came up during their between-song banter.

A four-piece, with two singers, The Menzingers were quite a bit heavier live than what I’ve heard from them before. Their set included material from both of their full-length releases, including this year’s “Chamberlain Waits.” At times punk, and at times hardcore, they seemed to gel the best when the songs included both—like late in the set when the songs became large anthems.

The most interesting part of their set happened half-way through when one of the guys ran off stage for a few minutes and then came back saying he had crapped his pants. Not sure if that was just a metaphor, an inside joke or was real, but it was definitely the funniest moment of the night.

The last band, and reason most of the people were there, was Gaslight Anthem. Touring in support of their excellent new disc, “American Slang,” the band came out to Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” and proceeded to rip through more than twenty songs and had the crowd in a frenzy all night.

The first song, “American Slang,” got the show off to a fast start and was followed by fan favorites like “Old White Lincoln” and “We Came to Dance.” The first part of the show featured eight of the ten songs from “American Slang,” half of their previous disc, “The ’59 Sound,” and a few songs from their first album “Sink or Swim.”

The band doesn’t try to hide their influences, mixing bits of those artists’ lyrics into their own songs, and one of the more interesting ones they used was the second verse of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” as a delicate intro to “The Queen of Lower Chelsea.” Then about half way through the show they jammed out “The ‘59 Sound,” a song that turned a lot of people onto them and one of the best singles of the last ten years.

After the first set, they left for a few seconds before coming back out for a five song encore. It was pretty much over after the second song, though, a cover of The Who classic “Baba O’Riley.” A million other artists have covered that track and while it’s near-sacred, the boys carried it flawlessly.

Not only that, the band played its punk Americana in a 2,000 seat venue and still somehow seemed credible. Not a lot of bands can do that, but there aren’t a lot of bands out there like Gaslight Anthem.

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If You Go

What: Gaslight Anthem
Where: Riviera Theatre, Chicago
When: Mon, Sept 20
Info: 773.275.6800