Jeff Rosenstock played the Paradise – 11/23
Rosenstock and his band rolled into town for the first of two long-awaited, sold-out shows just before Thanksgiving alongside tourmates Oceanator and Slaughter Beach, Dog.
If you heard me talk about the return of live music in any way, shape or form during our long pandemic hiatus, you inevitably heard me bring up that Jeff Rosenstock was my number-one most-anticipated gig if and when touring returned to “normal.” Last year’s instant classic No Dream surprise dropped at the peak of the weirdest spring of my life, just in time to soundtrack countless runs and drives in that anxious expanse that was the remainder of 2020. The record was truly a rock for me, and a beacon of hope for a (slightly) less awful future. Someday, I’d think to myself while jogging laboredly through Brookline on a 90-degree afternoon, I’ll get to hear these songs live.
Last week – which feels like a decade after last summer – that time was finally nigh. Riding a higher profile than ever, and midway through a string of largely huge and sold-out shows, Rosenstock gave little indication that things had changed at all for him. He simply did what he’s been doing for the better part of three decades now: show up and offhandedly deliver the kind of cathartic rock show that fuels the mythology of cathartic rock shows.
From note one, which struck up a mosh pit that basically never ceased for the remainder of the night, it was evident that Rosenstock and crew had been just as eager to play these songs as their gleeful audience was to hear them. A 20+ song setlist rattled off nearly the entirety of No Dream, in addition to a healthy chunk of 2016’s solo breakthrough WORRY and a smattering of other gems, with an urgency befitting just how agonizing the wait for this tour must’ve been for everyone in the room.
Journalistic objectivity be damned (not that I espouse much of that these days anyway), this was a gig of supreme personal importance to me. It may not have happened under the exact circumstances of back-to-normal that I’d envisioned (Jeff did have to remind folks to keep their masks on mid-set; I had the specter of post-shot side effects looming pending my booster appointment the following day), but that it happened at all felt huge. I sang along way more than I normally let myself, I drank too many beers, I somehow woke up with a persistent ringing in my left ear the next day despite my earplugs – but it was the (slightly) less awful future.
Through a lens less warped by intense emotional connection to the music, I can report that the rest of the bill was excellent too. Oceanator’s spiky and emotionally charged power-pop was a perfect complement to Rosenstock’s frantic pop-punk anxiety, and Slaughter Beach, Dog – the outlet for ex-Modern Baseball singer-songwriter Jake Ewald’s sweet and sweeping nu-Americana – balanced things out beautifully.
Scroll below for a gallery from the whole evening, and stay tuned for some probably-pretty-subpar film shots from the following night’s Ska Dream gig at some point in the near future.
