The live-performance trend of artists playing their most popular albums start to finish continues to go strong. But is it a great thing? The earliest iterations of this made sense.
Usually, it was a band or artist that had recently reunited, appearing on a festival stage to the largest audience it had seen in a long time. Or maybe it was a band that had been going strong for decades, but whose youngest fans wouldn't have had the chance to hear some of its earliest material played out the first time around (Sonic Youth playing Daydream Nation, for instance.)
Lately, though, the loop seems to be closing earlier, and has spread from dinosaur-indie into punk's various latter-day sub-genre offshoots. Last year, Get Up Kids reunited to tour behind their 1999 album, Something to Write Home About, and with no other new material to offer.
The show landed at Revolution in November 2009. That night, the songs still sounded fresh, but the entire affair traded in invoking a deep nostalgia in an audience who, technically grown up though they may had been, still had some years of youth left to enjoy.
The upcoming tour by Thursday, who follow Get Up Kids by a couple years but share some of the same fans, may do the same. The band plans to tour behind the 10-year anniversary of 'Full Collapse,' an album that helped defined so-called "post-hardcore" at the turn of the millennium. The tour is planned as a well-meaning thank-you to longtime fans, and many fans who remain equally attached to this album will be thankful right back.
Still, though, where Thursday differs from others on the nostalgia circuit is that Thursday is, for all intents and purposes, still alive and kicking as a band -- and looking backwards before they're really old undermines that fact a bit. The band's last full-length, Common Existence, was as creative and literate an effort as any of its previous work. Too bad, though, that many of the older fans overlooked it.
So maybe it's a nostalgia tour, after all, that Thursday needs to win back some followers to the fold, or convert new ones. But to do so, and prove the band's still a vital force, it'll have to slip in some new songs after the mass singalongs to old favorites like "Understanding in a Car Crash" and "Cross Out the Eyes."
As a bonus, the opening act is Underoath, a sort of intermediate band that bridged the time and sub-generational gap between Thursday and the current crop of Warped Tour acts.
Thursday, with Underoath. 6 p.m. Sunday, February 27. Revolution, 200 W. Broward Blvd., Fort Lauderdale. Tickets cost $30.70 in advance; all ages. 954-449-1025; jointherevolution.net
Thursday - "Cross Out the Eyes," from Full Collapse
Thursday - "Circuits of Fever," from Common Existence
