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Pop Etc Setlist
Tour Dates
03/01/16 Chicago, IL Subterranean
03/02/16 Detroit, MI Shelter 03/04/16 Toronto, ON Adelaide Hall 03/07/16 Boston, MA Brighton Music Hall 03/08/16 New York, NY Santos Party House 03/10/16 Philadelphia, PA The Foundry 03/11/16 Washington, DC U Street Music Hall 03/12/16 Atlanta, GA Terminal West 03/15/16 Houston, TX Bronze Peacock 03/19/16 Dallas, TX House Of Blues 03/21/16 Denver, CO Marquis Theater 03/22/16 Salt Lake City, UT Club Sound 03/24/16 Seattle, WA Chop Suey 03/25/16 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge 03/28/16 San Francisco, CA Social Hall SF 03/30/16 Los Angeles, CA Bahia 03/31/16 San Diego, CA House Of Blues Read More
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The SiriusXM’s “Alt Nation’s Advanced Placement Tour”, featuring Pop Etc, Banners, and The Moth & The Flame, just started their tour at the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis last night (February 29th).
Doors to the venue was supposed to be opened at 7pm, but the three bands were all still doing soundchecks while fans lined up outside the entrance for about 40 minutes. Since it’s the first night of the SiriusXM-sponsored tour, we figured the bands and tour managers were all still figuring out scheduling and adapting to the rough touring life.
The Moth & the Flame started off the evening. We’ve seen them at Bootleg Theater (Nov 2012), Satellite (Sep 2013), and Mill City Nights (Oct 2014), so we know these guys are not an “emerging” band. By the way they kicked off their set with the catchy “Red Flag” song, you can tell they’ve been around.
Singing in front of a giant upside-down ampersand looked really cool, especially with the way the lights would change with the songs, and the sign also doubled as the band’s icon (you instantly recognize it as part of the branding for The Moth & the Flame).
The Moth & the Flame’s latest is called Young & Unafraid, and they seemed pretty excited to play some new tracks. For their latest single, a break-up song called “Empire & the Sun”, singer Brandon Robbins explained that it was “probably the most emo song we’ve ever written... so prepared to be ‘emoed’!”
Of course, the song that got the best response from the audience was for the title track of Young & Unafraid, which started off with a great acoustic guitar intro, but leading into a non-stop youth anthem that had their fans singing along.
Liverpool’s Banners traveled the most distance to be with us for the tour, and singer Michael Nelson made it known that his band spent 14 hours in a plane. It’s also Nelson’s first time in the USA, so he’s making the most of it, taking in everything North America has to offer. In addition to acknowledging just how massive the US is, he also mentioned that he saw American flags everywhere! If you live here, you barely notice these things.
Banners had a full band (keys, guitars, bass, drums) and they played a solid, high energy 40-minute set. Although the band is quite new (just recently only released his debut EP in January 2016), hearing and seeing how fans were interacting with the band, we’re pretty sure Banners will be playing bigger and better venues in the future.
Key singles like “Ghosts”, “Start A Riot” and “Gold Dust” went over incredibly well with the audience.
As with all the bands on this bill, we felt they all could be headliners. With that said, the last band to take the stage was Berkeley’s Pop Etc (previously known as The Morning Benders). Again, we wrote about the Morning Benders in 2008, right about the time they went on tour with The Kooks, Death Cab for Cutie, and Ra Ra Riot.
The trio (brothers Chris & Jon Chu, and Julian Harmon) are currently touring in support of their latest album Souvenir. Singer Chris Chu mentioned that they’ve played it all (large sized venues with The Wombats for example), but they were really comfortable with a smaller club size of the Triple Rock Social Club.
As previously mentioned with the ‘first night of the tour’ problem, the band ran into some “cables” problems after “Your Heart Is a Weapon” and prior to their Tears for Fears cover song “Mad World” (which sounded more in the upbeat/pop-friendly Pop Etc-styling than the slower/depressing version by Gary Jules). Although Chris thought his “We got all new cables” joke was funny, I honest thought their unintentional “World” block of “I Wanted To Change The World But The World Changed Me”, “Mad World”, and “Backwards World” was the funniest. If they would only cover Inspiral Carpets’ “Two Worlds Collide”, that would be over the top.
After thanking the crowd for staying late on a Monday night, the band finished their set with “Running in Circles”, which is perhaps the highlight of the show. Everyone was hand-clapping to the song and did a last-ditch effort to dance to Pop Etc.
If you love Alt Nation, you definitely need to check out the SiriusXM’s “Alt Nation’s Advanced Placement Tour”, featuring Pop Etc, Banners, and The Moth & The Flame. The three bands are in Chicago tonight.
Doors to the venue was supposed to be opened at 7pm, but the three bands were all still doing soundchecks while fans lined up outside the entrance for about 40 minutes. Since it’s the first night of the SiriusXM-sponsored tour, we figured the bands and tour managers were all still figuring out scheduling and adapting to the rough touring life.
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The Moth & the Flame |
Singing in front of a giant upside-down ampersand looked really cool, especially with the way the lights would change with the songs, and the sign also doubled as the band’s icon (you instantly recognize it as part of the branding for The Moth & the Flame).
The Moth & the Flame’s latest is called Young & Unafraid, and they seemed pretty excited to play some new tracks. For their latest single, a break-up song called “Empire & the Sun”, singer Brandon Robbins explained that it was “probably the most emo song we’ve ever written... so prepared to be ‘emoed’!”
Of course, the song that got the best response from the audience was for the title track of Young & Unafraid, which started off with a great acoustic guitar intro, but leading into a non-stop youth anthem that had their fans singing along.
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Banners |
Banners had a full band (keys, guitars, bass, drums) and they played a solid, high energy 40-minute set. Although the band is quite new (just recently only released his debut EP in January 2016), hearing and seeing how fans were interacting with the band, we’re pretty sure Banners will be playing bigger and better venues in the future.
Key singles like “Ghosts”, “Start A Riot” and “Gold Dust” went over incredibly well with the audience.
As with all the bands on this bill, we felt they all could be headliners. With that said, the last band to take the stage was Berkeley’s Pop Etc (previously known as The Morning Benders). Again, we wrote about the Morning Benders in 2008, right about the time they went on tour with The Kooks, Death Cab for Cutie, and Ra Ra Riot.
The trio (brothers Chris & Jon Chu, and Julian Harmon) are currently touring in support of their latest album Souvenir. Singer Chris Chu mentioned that they’ve played it all (large sized venues with The Wombats for example), but they were really comfortable with a smaller club size of the Triple Rock Social Club.
As previously mentioned with the ‘first night of the tour’ problem, the band ran into some “cables” problems after “Your Heart Is a Weapon” and prior to their Tears for Fears cover song “Mad World” (which sounded more in the upbeat/pop-friendly Pop Etc-styling than the slower/depressing version by Gary Jules). Although Chris thought his “We got all new cables” joke was funny, I honest thought their unintentional “World” block of “I Wanted To Change The World But The World Changed Me”, “Mad World”, and “Backwards World” was the funniest. If they would only cover Inspiral Carpets’ “Two Worlds Collide”, that would be over the top.
After thanking the crowd for staying late on a Monday night, the band finished their set with “Running in Circles”, which is perhaps the highlight of the show. Everyone was hand-clapping to the song and did a last-ditch effort to dance to Pop Etc.
If you love Alt Nation, you definitely need to check out the SiriusXM’s “Alt Nation’s Advanced Placement Tour”, featuring Pop Etc, Banners, and The Moth & The Flame. The three bands are in Chicago tonight.
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Pop Etc at Triple Rock Social Club, Minneapolis (29 Feb 2016) |
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