AWOLNATION / Max Frost / Twenty One Pilots

Ignatius Feb 23, 2019

Max Frost
Funky lo-fi machine, one-man multi instrumentalist multitasking. Sometimes, Money Problems and Good Morning. Very funky loops

Awolnation
Run, Hollow Moon and Sail were all just nuts. Wasn't loving the back and forth with high and low energy songs, but sometimes it be like that tho. We did a "wave" with our lights up and it was epic. I also didn't know that a Texas radio station was one of the first to start playing Sail. I'd put my money on The Edge or The Eagle, I think one of the radio guys at How the EDGE Stole Xmas said they'd been playing Sail since the beginning. Also I think having AWOL open is a good sign that TOP is definitely moving out of the boyband/middle-school-girl-fanbase status of the Blurryface era, solidifying themselves as a fucking indie rock band. The crowd was noticeably more mature this go around

Twenty one pilots
Okay so I gotta start with Fairly Local. Man, in previous tours they just played the hook as an intro to HeavyDirtySoul. So I'm just enjoying my first time hearing the song live and had no idea Tyler came up 10 feet behind me. You got me good, boy. THANK YOU! Everything about the stage was incredible. the car, the matrix of lights, the risers, the square rigs that would rotate around and at the end of Lane Boy they enveloped Josh's drumset, the BRIDGE THING which played host to two of Tyler's raps, the B stage screen and "icicles" which played perfectly into the time-stop gimmick of Pet Cheetah. Every moment brought something fresh to appreciate, visually and sonically. Wardrobe changes, a progression from start to finish with various intros and outros, particularly the voiceovers before Lane Boy and We Don't Believe What's On TV. Great banter, Josh Dun basking in the praise of his glorious Dall-Abs... For Morph there was an arpeggio going with some kind of alternate time-signature, I didn't want to try to count it out but could tell it was a major break from the studio version, and I always love weird rhythmic tricks like that. Tyler's rapping prowess makes me feel like he's a modern day Eminem. Surely not as much raw rhyming ability, but in the emotions and the authority with which he speaks, what's great about both artists is they stand for something when they take the mic, something other than cash and pussy. Neon Gravestones definitely held my attention in that regard. Best tour so far, their hiatus was 100% worth it, they came back and raised the bar through the roof, this is simply how you do shows when you're one of the biggest names on the scene.