The opening night of Jeff Rosenstock’s UK tour sees volume, speed and sing-along choruses abound at Leeds’ Belgrave Music Hall.
Jeff Rosenstock has had a busy decade thus far. Beginning in 2020, he released No Dream, an album that combined introvertive poignancy and a punk ethos in equal measure. But intent on never taking an audience for granted, he released the ska equivalent, Ska Dream, within a year of its predecessor. With these releases, Jeff is now five albums into a fruitful solo career following the disbandment of his previous band, Bomb the Music Industry! After such studio prolificacy, 2022 sees that prolificacy manifest in a live setting.
Masked up, the band begin with ‘No Time’, ‘Nikes (Alt)’ and ‘Scram!’, the opening leg to the album No Dream. This opening leg is performed at lightning speeds- seriously, blink and you’ll miss it. But speed is only achievable when teamed with a musical tightness that Jeff and his band have near perfected. Yet, despite these newer songs being outrageously ferocious, it was his older tracks that provoked the most jubilant scenes on the night. ‘You, in Weird Cities’ and ‘Wave Goodnight to Me’ are greeted with fervorous intensity amongst a loyal audience.
Volume took hold of the venue to the music’s occasional detriment, with some sing-along choruses failing to compete with the sometimes chaotic sounds emanating from the stage (the saxophone solo during ‘Nausea’ being particularly optimistic when performed alongside a band whose amplitude left this solo essentially inaudible). But any purist, and realist, acknowledges that Jeff and his band are not in this for audible fidelity. The brashness of such a destructive performance did more than make up for the Belgrave’s near overloaded speaker system.
The closing tracks to No Dream formed a triumphant conclusion, which lay the groundwork for a triumphant stage return to perform the closing songs to Jeff’s second solo studio album Worry. With no need to pause between many of these songs, the show built towards the climactic ‘We Begged 2 Explode’. One final sing-along ensued, as all present sound the gig’s final lyric ‘All these magic moments I’ll forget once the magic is gone’. And in a live setting, this lyric takes on a double meaning. Yes, the gig will be magical to some, and it is sad that the magic ends with the show. But simultaneously, such a finale marks Jeff’s departure from the stage for that night, every bit as grounded and self-aware as any audience member. There is no pretence with Jeff and his band, who consistently appear to love what they do and do it well. And with songs this good and a band this tight, one can hardly complain.