The crowd at the Riviera Theatre didn't stop moving last Friday night. Parts of the audience pushed one another and attempted to start a mosh pit, while others passionately sang with flailing arms and fists punctuating the air with emotion. On stage, the band members played their drums, bass, guitars...piano...and violin?Welcome to the Chicago stop of the Something Corporate/Yellowcard co-headlining tour, where the two bands infected the sold-out audience with their energy and spirit. Often lumped together with other artists in the pop-punk genre (both Something Corporate and Yellowcard have played on the Vans Warped Tour), the bands resist being packaged into such a category.
Although they attract a crowd of mainly pop-punk fans, Yellowcard prefers the label "rock" and Something Corporate prefers "piano rock." All labels aside, they were compatible choices for a six week-long tour and showed their camaraderie on stage.
The bands alternated closing sets throughout the tour, even though both performed for an hour each night. It was Yellowcard's turn to conclude the evening in Chicago. After two opening bands, Sleeping At Last and The Format, Something Corporate took the stage to play a mix of covers and tracks from "Ready...Break," "Leaving Through The Window," and "North" (respectively their second, third and fourth albums).
Though Something Corporate is a SoCal quintet, the clear frontman is singer/pianist Andrew McMahon. He spent the show jumping on stage and on his upright piano – McMahon performed "iF yoU C JORDAN," mostly on the piano, physically speaking – and flailed as he sang, while the other members (Josh Partington – guitar, Clutch – bass, Brian Ireland – drums and Bob Anderson – guitar) remained rooted in their spots.
McMahon was also a charismatic and caring frontman, pausing after the first song, "Hurricane," to allow fans to calm down. "We have to take care of one another tonight," he said, waiting for security to pull people out of the pit. "Is everyone up? Alright. Let's start the show. This is our sixth time in Chicago in a year and you are always the fucking best." His statement proved true, as the audience – girls and guys - sung along to every word.
Highlights included a cover of Verve Pipe's "Bittersweet Symphony" that featured Yellowcard's Sean Mackin on violin and segued straight into "If I Die," a song from Something Corporate's second album that they revived on this tour. McMahon dedicated "I Kissed a Drunk Girl" to Mackin because "because he [Mackin] cleaned up my vomit in the back of a car last night." Even more entertaining was that McMahon was singing to an audience of mainly high school kids.
Despite commenting, "We only have an hour, so we're not going to do much talking," Something Corporate played "Konstantine," a nine-and-a-half-minute ballad of heartbreak. While it's the best demonstration of the "piano" in the band's "piano rock," and a fan favorite (the shrieks after the opening notes prove it), it was still a risky decision to play a song of that length in such a short set.
If one was only able to see the band for 10 minutes, the last 10 minutes of the night were it. Something Corporate cleverly covered Outkast's "Hey Ya" to perfection, complete with the call and response "fellas" and "ladies" parts, and finished their set with "Punk Rock Princess" and the entire audience bouncing up and down.
Yellowcard took the stage half an hour later to perform a similarly constructed set of covers (Nirvana's "Dumb"), old songs (from "The Underdog E.P." and "One for the Kids") and new songs from their sixth release and major-label debut, "Ocean Avenue." The crowd erupted in cheers the minute the band walked on stage and didn't stop showing their love for the next hour, an effort that included tossing a blue thong onstage between "Believe" and "Miles Apart."
Unlike Something Corporate's solo frontman, Yellowcard split crowd interaction duties between Mackin and lead singer/guitarist Ryan Key. Mackin proved to be the more flattering of the two, saying things like "It's been a long time since we've hung out with the beautiful people of Chicago. You really don't know how beautiful you are – you're gorgeous," between songs.
Key's approach was humorous, especially in his introduction to "Ocean Avenue," the band's first single. "We wrote a song about where we come from, so I want you to put on your hardest beer-drinking, Nascar-watching faces and tear the floor up," he said. "Please?"
The band's effort to include the audience in backup vocals during "Ocean Avenue" failed for the first time on tour. They taught the audience – complete with conductor cues – to sing the "woah, oh, oh" part near the end of the song. The crowd picked up the melody easily and powerfully sang their part until the band (also including Benjamin Harper on guitar and Longineu W. Parsons III on drums) missed their cue and messed up the end of the song. They laughed it off and started over again, much to the audience's amusement.
Yellowcard bounced around the stage during their entire performance and Mackin even performed back flips, creating a battle of the energy between themselves and Something Corporate. There wasn't a clear winner, but it doesn't seem like either the bands or their fans mind.
