*Click the main picture to see the full album.
“Put on your helmets, bitches!” Fort Collins Natives Elway & Friends Play 3 Kings
Fort Collin’s invaded Denver on Friday, Dec 1st, well okay, not necessarily an invasion, but they definitely sent some hard rocking ambassadors.
Arliss Nancy and Sour Boy Bitter Girl opened for Elway, who all brought they’re respective, yet intermingled genres to 3 Kings Tavern. One band, a little country, another a little Conor Oberst, and the last a little more punk, and in that order too.
The schizophrenic sounding line-up all complimented each other and the venue well. 3 Kings Tavern, a venue that jostles between super awesome and extremely frightening, somehow manages to get a different genre, and thus new crowd every night of the week. One night you could be enjoying a ska-punk show, skanking and chugging 40’s with strangers and the next night you could be seeing “The Show is The Rainbow” (Lincoln, Nebraska) and watching a coked-out, half-naked version of Jack Black running around in circles strangling himself with a microphone chord while spouting off some paranoid nonsense.
And yeah, tonight would merely add to that eclectic mix.
Elway, headliners of the night, have grown quite a following in the Denver area and with good reason (besides a stern finger-wagging by Colorado legend John Elway for encroachment of name). They’re music is reminiscent of late-90s pop punk bands like Alkaline Trio, NOFX and (seriously just fill in the blank).
Everything about pop-punk takes you back to a time when bands were less worried about how cool they look, and more into how much fun they, and ultimately the crowd were having. When fun is the core element of a show, good things will happen.
Tim Browne (lead singer) plays with such enthusiasm, that his mannerisms shout, not scream, “Yeah, the genre is outdated, we love it and you used to like it so we’re going to smack you in the face with it for ever thinking about leaving it.”
A ballsy move, especially when considering the ultimate demise of any power pop punk band that gets too big (Prime example, any power pop punk band that “made it”… ever).
Elway belted their songs like they hadn’t out-rocked the entire movement by 10-ish years.
Though, the real highlight had to be Arliss Nancy, the opening band, also from Fort Collins, playing their country-fried pop alt-rock. A band of farmhand rock stars, the black horses of the night, refusing to give up their Colorado roots for a more coastal look and feel the seems so popular nowadays.
Arliss Nancy is one of those bands who are hard to put your finger on, switching up the feel for every song but making it fit together in the end.
Their songs are similar to everyone’s favorite indie-rock versions of Bruce Springsteen, The Hold Steady, but with a delightful twist. Just imagine The Hold Steady with a less robust and overwhelming lead singer who just so happens to have a backing band. By simply turning down the lead vocals and distributing the musical weight more evenly, you are left with Arliss Nancy, blasting out Boss-esque power ballads into the night.
The second band, Sour Boy, Bitter Girl, consisted of a hybrid of a three new members with the guitarist and keyboards from Arliss Nancy but with more of an acquired taste.
Through their many references to the great Southwest, Benjamin Buttice (lead singer) had a less tormented Conor Oberst feel. An ambiance indicative to I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning or time spent with the Mystic Valley Band and fewer songs about first time sexual experiences [Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, “Take It Easy (Love Nothing)]. A few lyrics resonated by Buttice cut to the love deprived humans in all of us, cutting to your soul with lines like “I’d love to buy you a drink, but I don’t know what you drink anymore,” relatable for anyone who’s ever run into an old flame.
“Waltz of the Sea Wolf,” summoned the not-used-often-enough slow rotating disco ball hanging above the 3 Kings dance floor, transporting the entire audience back to their high school prom. Loved it, hated it or neglected to attend it this song left a lasting impression of high school dances for the better.
Their songs may transport you to the desolate Southwest, but as fast as an Elway band member can bark “Put on your helmets, bitches!” before the start of the next song, you are taken back to where you started, wedged between some rocks and a grassland, at a haphazard punk venue, in Colorful Colorado.
-Review by Chris Barker, shitty pictures by Bearcules.
