Images: Thrice, La Dispute, o’brother September 30, 2011 at the Hard Rock Cafe of the Strip

In the days leading up to Thrice’s September show at the Hard Rock Café on the Strip, their first date in support of their recently released 7^th studio album Major/Minor, I found myself reminiscing quite a bit about my earlier experiences seeing the band. Seeing them play at Tremorz with Seven Foot Midget. Playing a free 4th of July show with Vandals, classic rockers Jefferson Starship playing on the stage to their left. The Honda Civic Tour with Dashboard Confessional and Get Up Kids, and the show at the Sanctuary with Hot Rod Circuit and Midtown. My college years are colored with so many memories of seeing Thrice that I’m pretty much a fan for life.

As the band pointed out during their encore, Vegas was almost a home away from home for the Irvine, California quartet, and it was their first and most frequent tour destination during those early days. So as much as the night was the band’s celebration of their new record, it was also a celebration of a decade of Thrice shows in Las Vegas, the band playing through a career-spanning set that left no album untouched. That’s right, for the first time in about 7 years, the band returned to the fan favorite album that kicked off their career for an explosive rendition of “Phoenix Ignition” and the crowd went wild, lost in a sea of fist pumps, circle pits, and sing alongs. The band prefaced their encore by warning newer fans not familiar with the earlier material that they might want to step out early, or at least shield their ears bit. The encore also saw the band dig out “To Awake And Avenge The Dead,” a classic from their sophomore, and breakthrough album The Illusion of Safety.

The remainder of the band’s set featured an assortment of songs from the rest of their catalogue, with the one-two punch of “Cold Cash And Colder Hearts” and “Silhouette” from 2003’s The Artist in the Ambulance drawing the biggest response from the packed Friday night crowd. It was great to see that the band still commands such a large crowd and even better to see the fans appreciative of the wide array of styles they effortlessly shift through. From the punk and hardcore of those earlier records to the ambitious sounds of Alchemy Index, to the laid back and bluesy feel of Beggars and Major/Minor. While I’ve yet to familiarize myself with the newest addition to their discography, the night certainly inspired me to do so, main set closer “Anthology” in particular sounding like an instant classic.

On the other side of the coin, opener La Dispute is a band I’ve become a huge fan of only in recent years and I considered myself very fortunate to be seeing them for the first time that night, checking another “The Wave” band off my “must see” checklist. The band reminds me of a cross between the emotional complexity and soft voice of Thursday and the frantic time changes and passionate yell of early Thrice, but delivered in a way that is truly specific to La Dispute. While the band was a new experience to most in the audience, a small group of passionate fans gathered as close as they could to the barrier, encouraged to come even closer when vocalist Jordan Dreyer leaped to the front for a communal sing along.

Indie/experimental band o’brother and ambient rockers Moving Mountains also got the crowd hyped up for what was a pretty amazing night, and you can see all the photos below.

-Emily Matview

Photos by Emily Matview | https://www.flickr.com/photos/holdfastnow/

and Tyler Newton | http://500px.com/spottedlens

Thrice’s setlist:

Yellow Belly
The Weight
Promises
All the World Is Mad
In Exile
Call It in the Air
Silhouette
Cold Cash and Colder Hearts
Treading Paper
Blur
The Whaler
Words in the Water
Cataracts
Firebreather
The Earth Will Shake
Anthology
Encore:
Phoenix Ignition
To Awake and Avenge the Dead