Four bands. One night. House of Blues Boston was packed by 7pm and didn’t let up until very late in the night.
Combat kicked things off, drawing an early crowd that may have had something to do with their label. The Baltimore band is signed to Counter Intuitive Records, a Boston-based imprint, which gave the room a local rooting interest from the jump. Teen Mortgage followed, the DC duo making a lot of noise for just two people. A drummer and a guitar-wielding singer, they had the floor moshing and crowd surfing before most shows even get warmed up. Militarie Gun went third, keeping the energy high heading into the headliner.
By the time Joyce Manor finally hit the stage just before 10pm, the crowd had been on its feet for nearly three hours and showed absolutely no signs of it. A massive pit opened up on the floor immediately, and security looked genuinely exhausted with the relentless wave of crowd surfers coming over the barricade. The floor was where the action was, wall to wall, while the balcony offered a different kind of entertainment: watching the controlled chaos unfold below.
Joyce Manor’s songs are famously brief. Their new album “I Used to Go to This Bar,” their seventh full-length produced by Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz, clocks in at a whopping 19 minutes. That brevity is a feature, not a bug. It’s what allows a band to pack 25 songs and three openers into a single Saturday night and still leave the crowd wanting more. The setlist pulled heavily from the new record while making room for tracks spread across a catalog that now spans fifteen years. The new material holds up in a live setting, Gurewitz’s fuller, more in-your-face production translating well to a packed rock room.Â
The evening closed with four encores, the first of which delivered the night’s most memorable moment. Nate Ruess walked out and joined the band for “Angel in the Snow,” the first time Joyce Manor had ever performed the song in full live. The room that had been thrashing all night finally went still for a moment, the kind of surprise that no one saw coming.
California pop-punk royalty, fifteen years in, and still capable of filling a floor and pulling out a moment no one expected. Joyce Manor made a strong case Saturday night for why they’ve lasted this long.
Get tickets for the “I Used to Go to This Bar Tour” here.
Nathan Smith is a Providence-based music photographer and journalist focusing on capturing the special moments and unfiltered magic of live performances. Whether he’s shooting established artists at sold-out TD Garden shows or documenting the rise of emerging local bands, his goal is the same: to pull viewers directly into the heart of the moment.
His writing spotlights rising artists and local scenes, with a focus on telling the stories that often get overlooked. A lifelong music fan and musician himself, Nathan approaches interviews and portraits as conversations rather than transactions, building trust with artists so their genuine personalities can shine through. Whether he’s backstage, in the photo pit, or at home in front of the keyboard, he brings the same curiosity and care to every assignment.
Outside of his press work with Juice Box Press, Nathan works regularly as a photographer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous bands in the Boston and Providence area. Nathan also plays violin with a local orchestra, follows Celtics basketball almost religiously, and is an avid fantasy reader.