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Tomorrow Never Knows Sun Jan 18 2015
Metro Celebrated Saturday Night with Jukebox the Ghost
There is very little more satisfying than seeing a group of women take the stage to play rock and roll. To be certain, there are some great female singer songwriters, solo acts, and vocalists out there, but female bands, especially rock bands, are few and far between -- which is why it was such a delight to see Secret Someones take the stage as the first opener at Metro on Saturday night. The female fronted band consisting of Bess Rogers (guitar), Hannah Winkler (guitar/synth) and Leila Broussard (bass), with drummer Zach Jones, played a quick set of loud, brash, fun, intelligent rock music off their 2014 EP I Won't Follow.
Next up was Twin Forks (not to be confused with Twin Peaks, playing Metro today, or Twin Shadow, playing Metro in April) fronted by Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional. The group brought their brand of feel good Americana/folk to the stage with smiles, whistles and hand claps to the obvious delight of the crowd. The musical genre of Twin Forks is substantially different from Carrabba's other projects, but it feels entirely natural to him. The band made their way through tracks from their self titled 2014 album as well as a couple of Dashboard songs.
After a couple of tense minutes during which seven or eight people tried to fix the keyboard and Ben Thornewill joked that we might all be in for the worst Jukebox the Ghost show ever, the keyboard was up and running and so was the band. The crowd had gotten their fill of rock and roll and Americana - it was time for some pure unabashed power pop.
With Ben Thornewill on keyboard, Tommy Siegel on guitar/bass and Jesse Kristin on drums, the DC based threesome is nothing if not polished to perfection. Sounding spot on to their records, the group played from their self-titled 2014 album with "Postcard" "Sound of a Broken Heart" "Made for Ending" and "Hollywood" as well as favorites from their catalog "Hold it In" "Victoria" and "Somebody."
Managing to poke fun at themselves while also remaining entirely unapologetic about it, the band called themselves out for their love of stuffed animals as a backdrop ("Yes, Jesse is a full grown man who does order stuffed animals off Amazon prime") as well as their love of terrible covers (which was on glorious display when the band covered Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now"). The group ended the night by bringing Secret Someones up onstage to help them cover "Walk Like an Egyptian" an odd choice for a finale, but also consistent with the band's unwillingness to take themselves too seriously -- an entirely winning quality.