Rise Against, Alkaline Trio, Thrice, & The Gaslight Anthem at the Congress
Two of Chicago's favorite punk bands come home for a two-night stand
They look like such nice boys. Why are they so angry?
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Rise Against recently released an excellent new album, Appeal To Reason, but you would’ve hardly known it last night, when the Chicago band played the first part of a two-night stand at the Congress Theater. Of the group’s 20-song set, only three—“Re-Education (Through Labor),” “Collapse (Post Amerika),” and the acoustic “Hero Of War”—came from the new album, with Rise Against apparently content to focus more on time-tested crowd-pleasers.
Not that the audience, which seemingly filled the Congress to capacity, minded. But it reacted warmly to the new material, so it felt like a bit of a letdown when Rise Against withheld Appeal To Reason’s two best songs, “The Dirt Whispered” and “Audience Of One.” (They’re making a video for the latter after Thanksgiving.)
Regardless, Rise Against’s set showed the band has amassed an impressive collection of material over the course of four albums. (The group mostly avoided their 2001 debut, The Unraveling—save for fan favorite "Everchanging"—and that’s probably for the best.) Of the 20 songs, there wasn’t a dud in the bunch: “Life Less Frightening,” “Blood To Bleed” (from 2004’s Siren Song Of The Counter Culture); “Like The Angel” (from 2003’s Revolutions Per Minute); and “Ready To Fall,” “Survive,” and “Chamber The Cartridge,” from 2006’s The Sufferer And The Witness, all sounded particularly powerful. Frontman Tim McIlrath prefaced “Cartridge” with praise for fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama, and couldn’t contain his glee that the Bush regime—which has provided so much inspiration for Rise Against’s agit-punk—is quickly becoming a “thing of the past.”
Rise Against has always put its politics—personal and otherwise—at the forefront of its identity as a band, an effort that has served it well over the past eight years. The band started just as the Bush Administration came to power, and W’s reign has been a golden age for bands like Rise Against. However, in its hometown, Rise Against’s often-apocalyptic lyrics felt oddly discordant with the mood of a city still basking in Obama’s election. The incongruity peaked before the band even played: A sample—presumably of Denzel Washington as Malcolm X in Spike Lee’s biopic, X—played before the band took the stage, with a fiery Washington denouncing a government that had failed its people. But like the media’s silly focus on the future of political comedy without a buffoon in the White House, plenty of injustice will remain in the world to inspire Rise Against after January 20th. And if it leads to more personal songs like “Audience Of One” and less of the de rigueur rabble-rousing McIlrath and company tend to favor, all the better for fans.
Preceding Rise Against Thursday night on the four-band bill was the Chicago-born Alkaline Trio. Their supporting role on this tour (only a 10-song set) emphasized how the band’s next-big-thing status, which peaked around the 2001 release of From Here To Infirmary, has faded. The group’s latest record, this year’s Agony And Irony, was as solid as its predecessors were, but the Trio’s moment has passed.
You could argue the same about Thrice, the post-hardcore group who seemed on the verge of big things after 2002’s The Illusion Of Safety. A short stint on a major label followed, but the band has since returned to indie Vagrant as it has grown more progressive artistically. Thrice’s set Thursday night was a nice mixture of power and expansiveness; the group knows how to give fans the gut-punch that characterized early albums, but continues to work beyond the stylistic template of that sound. If it maintains its current path, Thrice could develop into one of indie-punk’s most interesting bands.
Opener The Gaslight Anthem is well on its way to becoming one of indie-punk’s best bands. The group’s latest, The ’59 Sound, is one of the year’s best albums, a collection of Springsteen-loving roots-punk full of hooks and heart. That they played to such a sizeable, enthusiastic crowd, in spite of being the first of four bands at an early show, reinforces the notion that The Gaslight Anthem could have big things in store. A return to the Congress, this time as the headliner, could happen sooner rather than later.
