Many bands draw influence from past decades but it is a challenge to almost recreate it, while still breaking new ground on your entire sound as a band. California’s dream pop indie rockers, Bad Suns were able to bring a packed crowd back to what a show may have been like at the Whiskey A Go Go, during the 1980’s.
Bad Suns brought their ‘Mystic Truth Tour’ to the 20th Century Theatre Friday night with all the flair and stage presence of a band on the Sunset Strip. Quick, punchy, and catchy tunes while the front man Cristo Bowman interacted with the crowd channeling moves from Bono with the style of George Michael circa Faith era.
Bad Suns write songs that are so engrained in our teenage years and early 20s and are able to convey that to the crowd, which also happened to be primarily in that demographic.
There are moments in their music and in their live show, that are reminiscent of the Cure and what made New York indie music so great in the early 2000’s. It draws from moments that make you feel melancholic and turns them into these magical dream pop songs or into these punchy Interpol-like rock tunes.
Coming out to three songs off of each of their albums Bad Suns welcomed new and old fans, but didn’t rely too much on their new album Mystic Truth seeing that the fan base was deeply rooted in Cincinnati.
Constantly addressing how great the crowd was in Cincinnati, almost to a surprised extent Bowman at one point even said, “Note to self: Come back to Cincinnati a lot.”
The crowd was engaged the entire time, with fans on each others shoulders, to holding up Bowman throughout the show when he’d leave the stage to interact with the audience.
One song that stuck out was, ‘Away we Go,’ the first track off of their latest album which seems to be the bands attempt to channel a California pop version of Born to Run, but the performance of the song encapsulated what the band is able to do live, be both very polished and engaging with audience.
