So it took a while, but after six shows, Alkaline finally earned an ‘A.’ Here’s why:
1. The Black Cat was the smallest venue I’d ever seen them at. I could stay a few throws back, watch the pits churn, and still be fifteen feet from the performers.
2. It was the best setlist I’ve seen them play: “Armageddon,” “You’ve Got So Far to Go,” “Private Eye,” “Blue in the Face,” the return of “This Could Be Love” / “Radio,” and a ton of early, obscure songs. Somehow I had never heard of the last song, “97,” but that actually made it better. I could experience it for the first time, I could appreciate that there were people in the crowd more committed than me, and I could watch Matt Skiba hit bottom.
3. Dan Andriano sounded great. In the first few shows, he was the definite weak link. This time, vocally, he may have actually been better than Skiba. I barely even remember “Fine” on This Addiction. As soon as I heard him sing it live, though, I had to go back and re-listen.
4. I spent the entire encore an arm’s length from the stage! Not only that, as I stood there, among the faithful, a jet of air conditioning pumped down on us! It was as if it came from the band’s own twisted version of heaven!
5. The band and the crowd connected. At one point in the show, Matt Skiba checked with a tech guy what time the metro closed, was told it closed in thirty minutes, and came back to say, “Alright, we’re gonna play these songs really fast – speed everything up.” He continued to bond with the audience during the intro to “This Could Be Love,” explaining that DC’s Vietnam War Memorial was an important place for his mom, a Vietnam vet. He then dedicated the song to all moms. I’m not how many moms would appreciate being linked to a character’s murderous pyromania, but it’s the thought that counts...
6. Undoubtedly the strongest band-crowd connection was made right before the encore, when Skiba noticed that a girl had lyrics on her arm. He asked her which song’s lyrics those were, and she said “Eating Me Alive,” a song that they had never played live. Usually I’d be skeptical of a band saying they had never played a song live, but it would be an awfully elaborate hoax for him to mess up twice during the song to prove it. As soon as the song ended, he looked into the crowd, saw the girl, saw that there were tears in her eyes, and said, “That made my night.” Mine too.
Grade: A
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