By Jase Walker
Never has a tour filled me with such nostalgic excitement as well as my own mortal dread as an album that chronicled another era of my teenage years turns 20 (Well, kind of) – ‘Ocean Avenue’ by the one and only Yellowcard. I genuinely thought I’d missed my chance to see this particular set, it was one of the big names plastered on Slam Dunk Festival 2023 that I had to make the call to skip on due to a clash. But imagine my surprise when they dropped a proper EÜ/ÜK tour with a stop on the next town over, no chance I’m passing it off this time. Please excuse me while I spontaneously grow an emo fringe for the evening.
The Wild Years opted to start their set with a sudden booming “hey hello!” that took me by surprise a bit as I totally wasn’t prepared for them to start. They’ve got fewer people on stage than I initially anticipated, one acoustic and one electric with some backing tracks to get things kicked off before the electric guitarist jumps off to the drums and a bass player appears to give a bit more layering to the show, kicking out a slice of easy-going pop rock that definitely sits well with the emo of yesteryear kind of vibe as the other main entries on the tour.
It’s great seeing there’s been a solid turnout for them as well, and not just that but there’s a fair amount of movement dancing along to them too. I did wonder how long before the standing lap steel would get some use so time to get some American country in there too, hell yeah. Giving themselves a bit of a self-deprecating moniker of “Discount Dashboard Confessional” to those just arriving gave me a good chuckle as tongue in cheek comments like that are always good!
Opting to try and draw people in with a classic emo anthem and I was suspicious right up until they hit us with Taking Back Sunday’s ‘Cute without E’. Oh boy it’s ukelele time now, I thought the band were done already because they had some filler music pop back on, anyway it’s time for the Mumford and Sons section now I guess! They’ve been a real fun act to get the show started, easy going, earnest and quite funny too.
Story Of The Year similarly announces their start with a massive explosion of sound that nearly makes me jump out of my skin, I’ve got my earplugs in at least. These are heavier than I remember as well, when that heaviness hits you’d forget the lighter parts even exist. Also I fucking love their bass players t-shirt, just in case there was any mystery around what he thinks of the current American climate.
Genuinely I think the start of this set has given me a quick lesson on me being out of the loop as far as Story Of The Year go, this is worship in the church of the riff. The pits have started and amusing some people in the front middle seem caught by surprise that a pit would open in a heavy show, comes with the territory folks! The band sees this and keeps fanning the flames and feeds off the steadily more chaotic swirl of people as the less fervent types have steadily shifted to the sidelines. God, I love their bass players tone as well, it sounds so damn nice and balances it out with the amount of power it delivers too.
Story Of The Year delivers their set with all of the fierce energy that bands of their era are well known for all the way from Funeral For A Friend to The Refused. More emo segments with poppy vocals mixed in with uncleans and heavier riffs that essentially wrote the rulebook for modern day metalcore. Although the post-hardcore style like this has been around for a while with its characteristic sound, it still goes every bit as hard as it did when I first decided dying my hair blue was a great idea. They manage to provoke a pretty fast circle pit going and from my spot on the balcony I can see people snaking through the crowd to get stuck into it too. And finishing up the set with their biggest song, ‘Till The Day I Die’, probably one of the biggest emo bangers written honestly, we finally get a few crowd surfers rewarded with a high five from their singer. This draws to a close a short but sweet however bloody fantastic set from Story Of The Year, don’t be strangers guys!
The room darkens and the text “staying up all night” is visible on the back of the stage… yes, it’s ‘Ocean Avenue’ time!
Opening with ‘Way Away’ and I suppose we’re going for a straight forward stomp through ‘Ocean Avenue’ start to finish, another fantastic full album set to add to my collection. Other than maybe Ne Obliviscaris and Callous Daoboys, this’ll be the hardest violin music you’ll ever get to see. For what feels like the millionth time this year I’m being taken on a trip to my teenage years in the best way possible and by the looks of the crowd surging back and forth constantly with a mix of young and old, they’re on the same page too. The lighting for this set is fantastically done and puts brief spotlights on each member with a key part in each song, it’s such a clean set up that doesn’t look crazy flashy but is damn effective.
We’re not doing a total song for song play through of the album though, ‘Ocean Avenue’ itself has been skipped out for now so it appears that my earlier observation was wrong, oh well! I am a little miffed as I do love an album played start to finish but I appreciate it may not always make a well flowing live set. Their singer takes a moment to say thanks and express amazement at the fact that they’ve returned and are now playing the biggest shows in their career. And with ‘Fighting’ coming up next the centre of the crowd makes good on their enthusiasm to blow the roof off of the Tivoli tonight and surges forward screaming.
Honestly it seems we’re witnessing a revival of pop punk and emo as this crowd is a mix of somewhat older Millennials and extremely enthusiastic Zoomers, I struggle to not feel ancient by this sort of observation, but I won’t complain.
It’s heartwarming that we get a bit of insight and history on the creation of ‘Ocean Avenue’ and how much it drastically changed the lives of Yellowcard from then on. After discussing a bit further along in the set, they even discuss being young and dumb and having a bit of an antagonistic relationship with Story Of The Year which prompts their singer to quickly jump on stage for some shenanigans. I can feel the time closing in on the end of the show, I can feel the time escaping me as the end time closes in. We get a treat for this tour though, brand new Yellowcard in the form of ‘Better Days’ and while still demonstrating the brash punky side of Yellowcard, and seems to feel a lot more ‘new’, it’s hard to put my finger on why exactly but the approach seems to align with more contemporary emo-adjacent music.
Well, this is it. It’s time for the title track and arguably the biggest song that everyone’s been waiting for. ‘Ocean Avenue’ symbolizes a far more innocent time but now I’ve got bills to pay so time to scream the words and forget about that for a few minutes.
Yellowcard will absolutely be back.
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