Pop Break Live: Taking Back Sunday with Frank Iero at Hollywood Palladium
After doing a quick poll around my office and amongst my friend group, I can confirm that roughly 75% of mid-to-late 20-somethings have had angsty cry sessions while listening to Taking Back Sunday. The percentage only went up when I asked about My Chemical Romance. Lucky for all of them, a billing of Taking Back Sunday and My Chem’s Frank Iero at Hollywood Palladium was the perfect antidote for their millennial dread.
Despite coming together in the late 90s, Taking Back Sunday seemed to reach the ultimate peak of alternative rock, pop punk, and emo in the mid-2000s – right when most of my friends and I were in junior high and high school. And while most may assume that they’re the type of band that mostly belong on the iPods of emotional teens, I think their recent residency at Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles proves anything but that
Led by the inimitable Adam Lazarra, Taking Back Sunday played two sold-out nights at the Palladium for the hyped-up LA crowd. Both evenings felt celebratory in nature, and not only because the band played their first two records Tell All Your Friends and on the first night and Tell All Your Friends and Louder Now the second night. The audience so clearly craved the catharsis of the music and so desperately needed one another.
I feel lucky enough to have heard my two favorite TBS records in full – Tell All Your Friends and Louder Now – and couldn’t believe how completely transportive the experience was. Opening with the first track off their first album “You Know How I Do” truly felt like the band had turned the venue into a brief time machine. A wave of recognition and familiarity rippled through the crowd and everyone sang every note. Despite standing in the photographers pit and being so close to the stage and band, I could barely hear Adam sing the words to “Cute Without The E (Cut From The Team)” because the crowd was singing it so loudly.
By the time the band began the mega hit “You’re So Last Summer,” I thought the night couldn’t get any better. With only a few verses and repeated choruses, we were all transported back to our youths, to a different time, to a different place. And the strangest thing was, not everyone in the crowd was someone who looked like me. There were actual teenagers there too. Something about those records and songs still strikes a nerve with audiences who might feel lost, alone, or confused.
Tracks from Louder Now, despite now being 13 years old, felt just as electrifying and energy-redefining as they did when they first premiered on MTV over a decade ago. “MakeDamnSure” still makes you want to lose your head, “What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?” still makes you want to scream-sing along, and “My Blue Heaven” still feels like the ballad that understands your pain more than anything else. Sure, Adam Lazarra is a bit older and bit grislier than he used to be, but the passion behind the songs are all still there.
It’s one thing to fall into the trap of nostalgia when it comes to early 2000s emo bands, and it’s another thing to encounter a band like Taking Back Sunday. Audiences still flock to their performances not simply for the high-energy entertainment, but because the music itself still holds up. The fact that teenagers today are just as moved by their records as teenagers over a decade ago were, speaks volumes for the legacy of Taking Back Sunday. Above all, they’ve been able to tap into the vulnerable parts inside us and we all need to experience the catharsis of letting that go through music.
