JORDAN BUDD
Staff Writer
The Fredonia house venue, The North Pole Strip Club (NPSC), has successfully held shows on March 12 and 26 since the vital shutdown announcement.
During the first event, the old house filled up with a boatload of midterm-liberated students for one last show before the crowd left for spring break. Intoxicated with freedom and maybe something else too, the lot geared up for another enjoyable classic at the North Pole Strip Club.
The lineup consisted of Buffalo punk-rock and noise participants, Cheap Peach, the best-type-of-dreary post-hardcore and shoegaze mergers, the Massachusetts act Moss Tongue, and the 2020 formed Buffalo genre-bending rockers, BP & the Oil Spills.
Cheap Peach started off the night on a strong note with a roaring set of originals, both released and unreleased. The band is no stranger to distortion, wielding a healthy amount within their hauntingly moody set. The band repeatedly deluged the audience in submersive waves of ethereal effects before building up to more traditional structuring throughout their dynamic performance.
Guttural yells from lead singer Tyler Will and witchy screams from Jade Hoch, the bassist, characterized their performance. The entirety of Cheap Peach, including guitarist Dillon Slater and drummer Brendan Ryan, built upon this noisy vibe and delivered greatly on their first show at the North Pole Strip Club in about two years.
Next up was the out-of-towners Moss Tongue, whose melodic but hard hitting set featured ear grabbing riffs, spacey sections of guitar feedback and villainous breakdowns. This tangible blend perfectly soundtracks eternally overcast days, where every wrong move feels cataclysmic.
Belligerent screams and downbeat vocals from their frontman, Max Fagnant, were proliferated appropriately throughout their show. His knack for a balance of sweet melody and rough throated torrents hitting in all the right places, made for a standout performance.
The band’s impressive writing wowed on both musical and lyrical fronts, with all four musicians meshing well together for their first and final set in NPSC, during the house’s ultimate spring semester run.
BP & The Oil Spills, the final act, rounded off the night in style with a myriad set spurring an unrivaled amount of passionate moshing within the rowdy crowd.
The fresh-sound group started off with the barbershop quartet intro baked into their original, ”Breaking Even,” a move that defines the band as an eclectic and dramatic act. BP & The Oil Spills’ performance was multi-sided, blazing through genres while retaining their core sound with a hydra-like approach.
Trevor Balbierz, Ashford lead singer and guitarist, Eerie Shores drummer, concert photographer and scene member of many talents, joined BP & The Oil Spills upfront to assist in covering the nu-metal rap rock classic “One Step Closer” by Linkin Park.
The group ended with a hilariously good ska-punk encore of “Stupid Horse” by 100 Gecs, which brought on an infectious wild abandon that was unmatched within the night’s performances. This wildcard band has a lot to offer.
The latest show on March 26 — dubbed a pool party hit for the ages — was a standing room only event that featured punk up-and-comers Early Worm, the headlining math rock of Floridian band, Pool Kids, and the Rochester emo powerhouse Carpool.
In particular, the shocker announcement of Pool Kids playing at NPSC, invigorated the Fredonia scene. The band is fresh off a national tour with Origami Angel and Save Face, supporting the Californian emo goliath, Mom Jeans.
Early Worm features two members from sister band The Weather Might Say Otherwise (TWMSO), Tanor Morrison (bass) and Zach Richardson (drums), while the rest of their lineup consists of Cooper Taylor (guitar) and Milo Duhn (vocals). The band started off the night appropriately in the full-to-the-brim basement. The group blends hard-hitting punk, mathy emo and even hardcore in a highly entertaining concoction. Lead singer, Duhn, impressed with a cutting-edge delivery full of varied vocal acrobatics.
The group’s performance consisted of unreleased tracks since they’ve yet to put out any tunes yet. As the four-piece’s six-song set progressed, it became a crossover episode leading to multiple feature performances from the TWMSO camp. Damian Brown, TWMSO’s lead vocalist, worked his way up to the front twice, while James Embser, close friend of the North Pole tenants, and Dan Doyle, the main orchestrator of the venue, contributed to Early Worm’s cover of “MYSTERY” by hardcore legends, Turnstile.
The headliners, Pool Kids, were up next, met with a spellbound audience, thrilled to have the popular, but still on-the-up-and-up act travel to perform in the depths of North Pole. The band is composed of vocalist Christine Goodwyne, bassist Nicolette Alvarez, drummer Caden Clinton and their more recently added guitarist Andy Anaya. The twinkly math rock virtuosos played standout songs from their highly praised 2018 album, “Music to Practice Safe Sex To,” while throwing in some sundry unreleased material within their edge-of-the-seat set.
The talented southern-born players did not shy away from connecting with the Fredtown audience, as Goodwyne and Anaya repeatedly dove into the headbanging hoard of starstruck but still in-the-moment listeners, which overflowed into the merch room and stairwell at the basement’s rear.
The fervid crowd emphatically sloshed about as Pool Kids incisively guided the audience through extensive math rock adventures. Players Anaya, Alvarez and Clinton repeatedly impressed, showing the band’s legitimate musical chops, while Goodwyne’s palpably emotional, adroit vocals helped to give the Floridian-band an evident emo lucidity.
Huge thank you’s extended from the Fredonia community to Pool Kids for making the long trip to play at our house venue. Their unbelievable, monumental performance seemed like a pipe dream, meaning oodles to both the rising bands and the enthusiastic supporters at the North Pole.
The NPSC fan-favorite veterans, Rochester band Carpool, Carpy for short, are one of the select acts that could successfully follow up Pool Kids at a Fredonia show. The Western New Yorkers’ lit a fire under the audience with their galvanizing, emotionally charged compound of gravely relatable emo disport and catchy pop rock zest.
The NPSC basement turned to a moshing funhouse as the audience members sang along with lead singer Stoph Colasanto’s lyrics as they joined with the audience, effectively blurring the lines of performer and show-goer. Their lyrics of substance abuse, toxic dalliances and endless pop culture references have become synonymous to the developing Carpy narrative.
Later on, the group let loose with their most popular song thus far in the penultimate moment of their set. The anthemic emo and powerpop slapper, “The Salty Song (Erotic Nightmare Summer),” is a quintessential moment from their most recent album. This vivatic spark plug of a track features a gargantuan, punchy chorus that stomped its way through every inch of the six-year-old showplace and was met with a first-rate audience response.
As they’ve done in the past, Carpool ended the night appropriately with a classic pop-punk heater, this time they chose the route of “My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit. Colasanto was joined by Goodwyne on stage, performing the alt-rock screamer, while engaging in a lionhearted whole-body launch into the audience for a once-in-a-lifetime house venue crowdsurf.
Soon enough the music winded down, and the crowd recuperated as punkish delirium still flew about the air. One of the biggest audiences to ever grace the NPSC filed out into the snowy outside world, thinking about what it must be like to be poolside in Tallahassee, Fla.
Upcoming NPSC Events:
Whether you’ve never been to a show, or you’re a long-time basement dweller, come out to NPSC while you still can! There’s three shows left:
Hardcore Show: April 9
SPACED
p.s.you’redead
Pure Bliss
Pale Hell
37 Fest: April 22 and 23
Lineups Unannounced