Tell Me How You Feel In Five Words Or Less

Monday was not a great day for me. Honestly, I don’t think it was a great day for anyone. Not only was it the day after daylight savings time, something just felt off, and after a pretty shocking chat with someone who quoted me an insane amount to fix my broken garage door, but it also took every ounce of me to not have a complete breakdown. I sucked it up, brought myself back to life, and pulled it together enough to get downtown to First Avenue for a show, but even when I walked in, something still felt off. It’s not that I didn’t want to be there, more that I just needed a night to wallow in my self-pity as I questioned what in the heck I had done wrong or why that whole phrase, “when it rains, it pours,” was hitting me particularly hard. I was already planning my escape from the show for a silent drive home where I could just let it all out, but then the power of live music pulled me back. This is all so dramatic, I know, but that’s just what was going through my head at the beginning of the night, and by the end of the night, I dreaded the drive home because it meant that my night and the music were over.

English rockers Creeper were the first to take the iconic First Avenue stage. Although the crowd was still growing by the time they hit their first note, this dramatic and dark band didn’t hold back, and they gave the audience everything they had. When I say this band was dark, I don’t necessarily mean it reflects their sound. Don’t get me wrong, there were moments of intense rage that happened throughout their opening set, but overall, this band’s sound felt way lighter than their look. It was a bit like Ghost to me. Sinister imagery mixed with oddly bright sounds. This juxtaposition had me hooked. I loved watching the members of this band thrash around on stage with blood dripping from their mouths, with a bit of a dark, vampire, dungeon-style aesthetic, but getting treated to a sound that was, at times, a bit more glam-rock leaning.

Although Creeper was new to me and this was my first exposure to them, it was clear that many in the audience had been waiting a long time for this moment. The front row of the audience was full of screaming fans, and I quickly realized that my earplugs weren’t saving me from the sound pumping through the speakers; they were saving me from the deafening screams from the front row. This really set the stage for the night and was the first moment of my Monday when I knew that everything was going to be okay. I talk about it all the time, but holy heck, the power of live music, the drug that is live music. I swear, you could be in the worst mood, the most depressed of headspaces, but one set like what Creeper gave and what came with the following two bands, and all of that just disappears.

Where do I even begin with letlive., the next band to take the stage? Here’s the deal: I knew that this band was going to steal this show before they even stepped foot on the stage. I knew I would be thrilled, stunned, and absolutely in love with everything they did. This is because I’ve seen them before and their live show is legendary to say the least, but I honestly didn’t expect to be so moved by their performance.

letlive. is a band from California. Their sound is definitely post-hardcore leaning, but with elements of everything from punk to rap hidden within their angsty sound. I’ve always loved how this band can hit you with the most extreme angst, but, within seconds, soothe restless souls with the deepest and most beautiful calm. Being able to experience that live has always amplified the band’s extreme mood swings and what they make you, personally, feel during one of their sets, but something felt just extra poignant about their set on Monday night. Maybe it was because of the crappy day, or maybe it’s because it’s been a pretty crappy year for us up here in the Twin Cities so far. Regardless, I was caught between wanting to curl up in a corner and just cry or ditch the camera and make my way into the pit that had formed.

This entire band is tight and perfect, but it’s vocalist Jason Aalon Butler who always steals the show and, truthfully, nobody should ever even try to compete with him. Also, the frontman of Fever 333 and a few other projects, to say that Jason was born to perform in a band like this would be an understatement. He doesn’t just perform the music, he lets it take him over and, on Monday night, that meant that at one point he walked to the upstairs of the venue, all the way to the back of the room and into the owners box only to sing while dangling over the edge of said owners box and continuing to find a pipe of sorts to do a couple of pull-ups on before ending his set with a triumphant walk back through the audience (leaving his microphone wrapped around this pole which gave his roadie a good laugh because now it was this poor roadie’s job to figure out how to get the microphone down). I could go way more into detail here, but this wasn’t my favorite “Jason” moment of the night.

My favorite “Jason” moment of the night was when he addressed the crowd. He talked about everything from the fact that he was honored to be in a city where protesting is alive and well to bringing awareness to the issue of women’s rights and the power of music. At one point, with the stage lights down and the house lights up, Jason dropped the microphone and just had a real chat with everyone. If you know, you know Jason Aalon Butler is a superstar. He’s a household name in many scenes, and to see such a superstar strip everything back and just be real and vulnerable absolutely made this a standout set. I know it’s early in the year, I know I said that Sunday night’s show was absolutely going to be one for my end-of-year lists, but I’m pretty sure that letlive.’s set from Monday night at First Avenue will also be in the running for best show of the year when 2026 is said and done.

The show had been stolen. letlive. left me feeling as exhausted as I felt free and liberated. I would never want to be a band to follow anything Jason does, but Hawthorne Heights was going to try. Don’t get me wrong, my elder-emo soul adores Hawthorne Heights and they sounded absolutely flawless as they played through their 2006 album ‘If Only You Were Lonely’ (this tour was the twenty-year celebration of the painfully underrated album) but their performance couldn’t hold a candle to what had just happened and it just felt a bit flatlined when compared to what had just happened but that didn’t stop the entire audience from singing along to every word with not just their voice, but with their hearts.

Hawthorne Heights was one of those emo bands that “made it.” They brought this style of music to the spotlight and, for that, they have become gods among men in a way. Sure, the album they were playing through on Monday night wasn’t ‘The Silence in Black and White,’ which is the album that really shot them to the stars and featured their mega-hit “Ohio Is for Lovers,” but this is an album that hit a lot of people at just the perfect time. The lyrics speak of love and love lost, a tale told a million times, but it was the way that this band used relatable words and phrases, not cliches, and paired them with a sound that ranged from intense darkness to blinding brightness. I feel like ‘If Only You Were Lonely’ was kind of spat on by the scene. The sound was more mature than other bands were doing at the time, and, because of that, this became one of my “secret listens.” Being able to hear and see these songs come to life while screaming along with hundreds of other people who had clearly been hit by this album in the same monumental way made me feel a bit less alone, and, at the end of the day, that is something that Hawthorne Heights stands behind.

You can hear it in their music, feel it in their performances. Hawthorne Heights is a band that is made up of the outcasts, the losers, and they make music for those people. I know that sounds so juvenile, so emo, but it’s true, and it’s a message that I think hits especially hard when you’re having a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, a bad year, whatever. What I’m trying to say is that although Hawthorne Heights’ set didn’t come close to as energized and insane as what letlive. had done, they held their own and closed out Monday night’s performance in a perfect way.