On September 20, playing to a crowd at The Granada that was rowdier than Sunday night typically entails, the Chicago garage rock group Twin Peaks opened things up with Miller High Life in hand.
The dudes of Twin Peaks are supporting Wavves on their fall tour, and they definitely have the energy to keep up. Drummer Connor Brodner upped the tempo multiple times in the evening and gave out such an influx of energy that you couldn’t help but grin — there’s raw talent there. And the same goes for the rest of the group.
Vocally, the group is incredibly diverse. Guitarists Cadien Lake James and Clay Frankel share the lead vocals with bassist Jack Dolan, and they all have distinctly different voices; somehow, it works. The group keeps a killer cohesive sound even when switching lead singers every song.
Songs from both their releases, 2013’s Sunken and 2014’s Wild Onion were brought to the stage. Hands down, the best song of their set was “I Found A New Way,” the popular single from Wild Onion. Brodner doubled the tempo on his kit and Colin Croom on keys lost his everlovin’ mind while Lake, Frankel, and Dolan convulsed in sweaty punk revelry, all the while keeping the track tight.
The crowd responded well to this supporting act; hopefully Lawrence will be seeing more of Twin Peaks in the near future. Damn. Lawrence was ready for Wavves.
As soon as the opening chord of Wavves set was struck, a body was launched in the air and gave the audience permission to collectively lose their minds. The backdrop consisted of a massive tapestry with a sideways, tie-dyed Yin-Yang sign made to look like a face with a teardrop coming from the eye. Very Wavves.
For an hour the crowd bounced, crowd surfed and shoved around everyone within arms reach. About a 50/50 mix of PBR tall boys and smeared X’s on hands defined the rowdy crowd as singer-songwriter, Nathan Williams shredded through their discography featuring a heavy amount of new material.
The new music consisted of singles “Way Too Much,” “Heavy Metal Detox” and “My Head Hurts” from their upcoming album V. They also performed plenty of classics, which really got this crowd going, like “Post Acid” and “Green Eyes”, from 2010’s King of the Beach. As well as, performing “Afraid of Heights” and then closing out the night with their most well known song “Demon to Lean on” both from 2013’s Afraid of Heights.
Nathan sang with his hair draped over his eyes, periodically pulling his hair back in between songs just to let it fall right back in front of his eyes. Guitarist, Alex Gates, celebrated his birthday tonight with a beer holster belt loaded with Bud Light and the crowd faithful broke out into happy birthday after the first song ended.
Nathan’s demeanor was somewhat stoic, but you could tell he truly cared about the performance. While guitarist, Alex flailed and shredded all over the stage, Nathan was much more meticulous about his movements and every song sounded just as crisp and precise as the album recordings.
Towards the end of the show during a song break a fan shouted out, “Follow me on Twitter!” to which Nathan responded in a deadpan tone, “If I get another add me on Twitter, I’ll f*cking kill myself.” (pause) “Just kidding, DM me.”
Written in cooperation with KJHK Music Director, Kayci Lineberger