Last night’s show at Lincoln Hall served as a homecoming concert for The Orwells and Twin Peaks, and the young bands were treated like the local heroes they’ve become to us fans in Chicago. Seeing The Orwells this time around felt like I was in the presence of big-time artists with a stadium-ready sound that somehow were mistakenly booked for a club gig. In other words, these guys played an all-around kick-ass show and demonstrated that they are on the brink of stardom for very deserved reasons.
Pictures below
A mix up at the front desk made it a bit difficult for me to come into the venue by the time Twin Peaks started things off, but I was eventually let in, camera and all, and got to see LH filled to capacity from floor to balcony. The openers played a set worthy of a headlining slot of their own with songs like “Baby Blue” and “Irene” getting the pit perfectly riled up. Bassist Jack Dolan and guitarist Clay Frankel ended up jumping into the pit and crowd-surfed for a moment once their set was over, adding the “cherry on top” to a brilliant set.
The second the night’s headliners got on stage, Lincoln Hall completely lit up. The band played “the classics” like “Mallrats,” “Other Voices” and “Blood Bubbles,” which were well-received as one would have expected, but the newer material that would appear on Disgraceland, like “Let It Burn” & “Southern Comfort”, was sung along to as if the band had been playing them live for years. A short cover of “Build Me Up Buttercup” made it feel like we weren’t at a Rock show for a minute, but more like we’re chugging beers with the brosephs at Mothers on Division and singing along to a jukebox all together instead.
Cuomo was up to the sort of antics that have made the young front-man a polarizing figure, but it’s all charismatic behavior nonetheless. He’d tell fans to help people up to crowd-surf, he’d put his arm around (and sometimes even kiss) whoever ended up onstage, and he even performed a track or two in a woman’s leather jacket after one wound up on stage. During the band’s encore performance of Iggy & The Stooges’ “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog,” the guys of Twin Peaks joined them and soon enough the fans started bum-rushing the stage to head-bang, jump around, and/or ask their friends who stayed behind to either join them or take a picture. At the end of the show Cuomo climbed up one of the speakers and when the people surrounding it prompted him to jump with the Almost Famous cry of “I am a golden god!” Cuomo jumped and landed on his back on top of welcoming hands that passed him from one side of the hall to the next. This show was a friendly reminder of how good and fun Rock & Roll can be.
