Not to sound like TV’s Mike Brady, but I’m really proud of you kids…

The Gaslight Anthem canceled their Varsity Theater show last-minute yesterday (one of the guys reportedly went to the hospital for nothing too serious; tickets will be honored at a makeup date to be announced very soon). Because of that, I half-expected a lot of you to bow out instead of paying another $10 to see the Heartless Bastards, who’ve have been pretty steadily climbing over their past couple albums and 400 Bar gigs but still aren’t a big buzz band du joir like the Anthem. And who could blame those of you who did stay away, what with the crappy weather and a hot NCAA basketball game?

Instead, though, the room was packed. What’s more, the crowd was heavily into Erika Wennerstrom and Co., who rose to the occasion with a stretched-out 90-minute set that highlighted the best stuff from their new album — my favorites were the title track “The Mountain” mid-show and the only acoustic song of the night, “Be So Happy” — along with the many nuggets from the previous two discs, highlighted by the urgent and hammering “Gray” during the encore and including “Come A Long Way” and “Swamp Song” earlier. Kudos all-around.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Concerts, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.