Sweet Baby Jesus with Sweepers and Nympho at the Pouch
Published 4.14.26
A couple Saturdays ago, I went to the Pouch for a 5 band show. I had never been to the Pouch before, it had honestly been a while since I'd been to a house venue generally (oh how bourgeois I've become). The layout of the place was unique to me. In most house venues I've been to, venue activities are sequestered to one room of the house, usually the basement. At the Pouch, though, the venue is intertwined with the entire first floor of the house. The basement was where the performances happened, but it doesn't have a separate entrance, so you walk through the entire house to get down there. I actually ended up almost going into someone's bedroom, the door to which was right next to where they were collecting the cover for the show. All the merch tables were above ground near the entrance to the basement. In between sets, people would hang out in all of the rooms on the first floor, on the front porch, and in the back yard. The basement itself was huge. It's still an unfinished basement, so it's dusty and looks like an abandoned mine, but the sound system was probably the best I've ever seen at a house show. They had what seemed like professional sound techs (two of them!) I was very impressed. The one thing I would say is that the cover for the night was $15-20. For a house show that's kind of steep. Yes, the sound quality was high for a house venue and yes there were 5 bands on the bill (not my preference btw, do people prefer a show with more than 3 bands on it??), but I still think that's crazy.
First band up was the John Moran Trio. As the name suggests, it's three guys. They've got one guy mic'ed and on drums, a guy playing guitar with a rubber band and an old guy in a floral shirt noodling around on sax. They mostly just made some sounds for who knows how long. Near the end who I assume is John Moran himself said a brief (but very slow) spoken word piece about shit being heavy. As you can probably tell, this isn't the type of music that I give a fuck about. I don't connect with it and I honestly see very little point in doing a project like this. And you know, I get it, I went to art school or whatever. It's the sort of stuff that focuses heavily on the self in my opinion and I'm just not into it. There were some people bopping along to it, and I can't know what they're thinking, but my guess is they're just not my kind of people. Many of the people who were up front for this first set left right after. It's their loss because there were several awesome acts to come!
The second band was this group called Ringtone. After the first set, I was excited to hear pretty much anything else. Apparently, these guys were down one member: their lead guitarist 0_0. With that in mind, I think they performed pretty admirably. They were all clearly competent musicians and their front person can sing really well (which is, frankly, a dying art). The songs themselves didn't really stand out to me though. Generally, I'm not super impressed by songs that have a lot of do-do-doing (unless they're really good). I felt like I could have been seeing just about any indieemo-ish band from Philly.
Okay, so the first two sets had me kind of deflated, but the third set turned it around. Nympho was up. This is the best set I've ever seen them do. Hannah had a mic made out of a modded landline. The visual effect is awesome, it was like she was bitching someone out on the phone, but the sound quality was also great. They recently did a dual release with Gripper, I was sorry to have missed the release show for that. I like the two new songs on that release, but there's also a few songs they played that are unreleased, one of which I really really like. I don't know what it's called of course but I'm pretty sure Hannah says “I hate my baby” at least once in it?? I hope they release that soon, I'm dyin' for it.
Next up was Sweet Baby Jesus. These guys have been playing together for over a decade and you can fucking tell. They are tight. I was having so much fun. You guys know how much I love to dance, I was so grateful to be able to do that for an entire set straight. Their front man was very entertaining and funny! People were laughing and moving pretty much the whole time, and that's what it's all about! I love music that makes people feel connected, no matter what that connecting emotion ends up being. Every member of this band clearly has serious skills, but some things that stood out to me in particular were that both the lead vocals and the back up vocals were very good, the harmonies on backup were gorgeous! Also, one of the backup vocalists was double dutying on sax. She was so good on both and was switching between the two seamlessly, I was very impressed!
Last up was Sweepers! A lot of people had left at this point. FOOLS. This set had me feeling like I was at the greatest show of all time. Audience participation was high. Sweepers benefits from a venue where there's nothing separating the band from the audience. At venues where there's a stage, Cam, Christian, and Luke are on stage and then Reneé is on the floor sweeping. With no stage, Reneé can sweep freely to and fro. Due to the nature of an unfinished basement, it was extremely dusty on the floor of the venue. The sweeping put all that dust into the air, I could feel it all over my teeth and it made getting a good picture basically impossible. Near the end of the set, somebody dropped a bottle of the Nympho poppers on the ground, spilling it everywhere. It was incredible, a very good way to finish out the night.
This was an interesting one! Lots of highs and lows, but I'm glad I stuck around for the whole thing!