reviews
LAST SHOW: TIGERS JAW BY: RYAN CAPOZZI
How do you say goodbye to something that will never die? Bostonians gathered at The Sinclair on June 24th in Cambridge, Massachusetts to try to figure that out as they geared up to see beloved Tigers Jaw play their final US show. The loyal, loving, and crazy fans that so well represent Boston and its music scene filled the venue to capacity, crowding the main floor that sits below the elevated main stage. Tigers Jaw was asked to play a second night in Boston, but unfortunately, the bands touring alongside them (Pianos Become The Teeth and Dads) couldn’t play another night. However Daylight and Lemuria, bands close to Tigers Jaw, played the show. Daylight opened with a setlist of new and old songs bringing a grungy sound reminiscent to the gritty and grimy feel of early Nirvana that so many love. Both fans and newcomers to Daylight got into their set from beginning to end and many walked out as fans of the band from PA. They payed homage to Tigers Jaw between songs and Lemuria followed afterwards. Fronted by Sheena Ozzella, Lemuria played an enticing set that combined the edginess of Sonic Youth with the calm fuzziness of Pity Sex, all in an up-beat style unique to Lemuria themselves. Undoubtedly, they too ended their set with many new fans, and made way for Tigers Jaw. “They’re gonna open with Return,” at least 5 people in the audience said. Yet even knowing exactly what was gonna happen, The Sinclair exploded from the very first note. Fists flew, people surfed, and voices chanted every lyric to every song. The setlist included “Test Patterns”, “The Sun”, and “Chemicals” which would give any Tigers Jaw fans goosebumps. It was an unquestionably emotional night in Cambridge and was a tough goodbye for fans and the band too. It seemed painfully clear in the choked-up voice of frontman
Ben Walsh, who stopped to thank the crowd for their support three different times during the set, in which the crowd responded with cheers and, “We love you!”, “Don’t go!”, and “You guys fucking rock!”. One of the night’s surprises was probably that the crowd didn’t storm the stage to hug the frontman. However, the part of the night that’d make the hairs on the back of any human-being stand up would be when Tigers Jaw played “Never Saw It Coming”. Walsh backed away from the microphone as the crowd immediately started singing every word at the top of their lungs. From the melodic beginning whose lyrics were second nature to the audience, to the apex of the “YEAHHHHHH YEAAAAAHHH!!!!” at the songs finale. A family of strangers that had only been together a couple hours had managed to sing and scream with more passion than any other chorus or aggregation of people you could ever find, all in the course of 2.5 minutes. It could’ve been longer but the band cut the song short in which Brianna said, “That’s the shortest I think we’ve ever played this song,” to which one crowd-member who is surely not writing this article replied “It’s okay, no one saw it coming” While that wasn’t the last song they played, the encores build-up was relentless, even with a bruised up and out of breath crowd, the anticipation for their final return to the stage was as though the crowds lives depended on it. The Sinclair exploded for Tigers Jaw one last time when they began playing “I Saw Water”. It was absolutely deafening in the Cambridge venue, eyeglasses were breaking, drinks were spilling, people seemed to be flying away. It was a nuclear bomb, a massive explosion that leaves behind nothing, or in this case, an emptiness that follows the final goodbye to the people who wrote much of the audiences soundtrack. In short, Tigers Jaw will never die.