Alkaline Trio

Cursive

Round 2 of the Alk3/Cursive tour.  I saw this show recently in San Francisco, but while I’m back home for the weekend in LA, a free ticket and convenient timing led to seeing this lineup once more.

Alison, Kelvin, Monica and I got to the HOB just in time for the start of Cursive’s set.  I didn’t recognize much of the first half, but caught some familiar favorite later on, including The Martyr and, of course, Art is Hard.

This show was pretty mellow for us as we stood not up front on the floor, but a bit further back, standing behind the sound boards.  Still a great view of the stage, but no sweaty punks running around.  I was in the pit last time, and while that’s fun, I didn’t mind hanging back for a change.  We had some beers, ran into familar faces and just stood back and enjoyed the music.

At around 10:30, the Alkalnie Trios came out.  Their setlist wasn’t too much different from the SF set; they played a mix of old and new songs, though skewing towards newer. They had a horn player come out for the new tune Lead Poisoning, and drummer Derek played bass for a couple songs in the encore, putting Skiba onthe drums and Dan on guitar. The crowd was into it, we were into it, it was a nice show.