“You all look really cool,” noted PONY‘s Sam Bielanski as she addressed the crowd at the Opera House on Thursday night.
“Like, everyone has a cool outfit on.”
And aside from her comment on the crowd’s fashion sense, you could tell she was also appreciative of the crowd’s energy as they responded fairly enthusiastically to PONY’s set, something which is not always a given for an opening act. Part of that response probably has something to do with the fact that this was an all ages crowd, as the youth do tend to get a little more excited about things than the grizzled show going veterans do, but it was likely also due to that fact that PONY are an engaging live act.
Running through a set of tunes taken mostly from their latest release Velveteen, Bielanski and her bandmates put on an impressive show full of catchy, crunchy power pop tunes that brought to mind the likes of Kay Hanley and Juliana Hatfield. Highlight of their set included “WebMD” (taken from their debut album TV Baby), “Très Jolie” and “Sick.”
Following PONY came the evening’s main attraction – L.S. Dunes, a supergroup featuring members of Thursday, Coheed and Cambria, My Chemical Romance, and Circa Survive. And just like PONY before them, L.S. Dunes also had much praise for the audience, with frontman Anthony Green mentioning throughout the set how great of a crowd they were. He mentioned at one point that in the lead up to their current tour, they had played a handful of outdoor festival shows. He went on to describe those shows as “fine” but also “weird as shit,” noting that he felt much more comfortable doing indoor sets and that he was grateful to be inside “this container” with us. “There’s so much more we can do in our little container.”
It’s true, a good audience makes all the difference between a show being just alright and being a truly memorable one. If a performer is giving their all and not getting too much back in response, it can certainly have a negative impact on the performance, but if a crowd is giving back a lot, it’s likely to egg the band on to take things up a notch. And the band did put on an impressive performance, running through the entirety of their debut album Past Lives along with recently released single “Benadryl Subreddit.”
Green ended off their set by giving a shout out to “The true hero of the night tonight” – the person who was working the lights at the Opera House.
“Whoever you are … fucking love you. Thanks for being a part of our band tonight.”
He then went on to add in a request “that we hit this disco ball hard” for the last song of the evening, the album’s closing track “Sleep Cult.” And as the band launched into that final number, the light of the disco ball set the right mood for the song’s emo/doo-wop vibes and made for a perfect show closing moment.
