Mom Jeans' Epic Emo Throwback at Night 1 in Chicago

Emo music and nostalgia are so intertwined that they might as well go on a co-headlining tour. Remember the gross creature that Jeff Goldblum turned into at the end of The Fly? That's nostalgia and emo music.

And it makes sense. Emo music has long touched on all types of looking back. Remembering high school. Thinking about a long lost love. Complaining about your upbringing. And because of the heightened emotional subject matter, it really speaks to teenagers, who spend their formative years with their favorite songs on repeat, tattooing them into their brains as the soundtrack to that time in their life. And thus, the perpetual motion nostalgia machine is in place, with the music being there as an instant time machine back to those times whenever you need it as you get older.

Last Thursday night was an entire evening that seemed to be based on looking to the past, both musically and stylistically. Mom Jeans have announced a different 'spirit night' for each of their tour stops. One night was 'sports jersey night'. One was 'hunting camouflage night'. The night before this was 'D&D night', with wizard hats and inflatable dragons not uncommon to see sprinkled into pictures from that evening's show.

On night one of the band's two-night stop in Chicago (the only city on the current tour blessed with multiple shows), it was...'Y2K night'. I wasn't really sure how to interpret that. Was I being encouraged to dress up as a malfunctioning ATM machine? A piece of code? A worldwide panic that didn't really happen? I'm assuming for simplicity's sake that the audience was encouraged to dress in their best 1999/2000's fashion.

One problem: This is an emo crowd. Asking them to dress in their finest fashion from the turn of the century would just have them leaving their oversized hoodies and black jeans at home for...a different pair of black jeans and an older oversized hoodie with more holes in it.

Either way, themed dress or no themed dress, the night's bill at Chicago's Concord Music Hall was stacked perfectly for an entire evening of throwing down throwback style. With Summer Salt, Bad Bad Hats, and Hunny in support, Mom Jeans was ready to deliver an evening of exactly what their tour t-shirts promised: loud, epic emo music.

Fans of Wallows and Bad Suns would feel right at home at a Hunny show. The California foursome were operating as a trio on the night, but there wasn't any drop off in their performance. Hunny is what you get if early Blink 182 just calmed down a bit and were less obsessed with dick and fart jokes. Hailing from the Ventura area of Southern California, their laid back roots were baked into both their pop-rock sound as well as their attitude. "This song seems to be pretty popular on the internet," lead singer/guitarist Jason Yarger told the audience before launching into the band's hit song 'Solo', "so if you know it sing along and if you don't, just jump around and shit." It's not too common for the first band on a 4 act bill to have the audience packed in, but Hunny got the people of Chicago to hit the venue right as doors opened to get a good spot for their set.

Usually when I write these things I go through all the bands in the order that they played on the evening. So it would be weird to mention Mom Jeans' set here to lead off talking about Bad Bad Hats. But during Mom Jeans' headlining set lead singer Eric Butler made a point to mention that they had been trying for years to play a show with Bad Bad Hats and how happy they were to make that dream a reality, especially since they were such an influence on the group.

Sometimes sounding like The Beths, sometimes sounding like The Front Bottoms, Bad Bad Hats are hard to describe. With pop rock energy that shifts into indie-esque sounds at the drop of a hat (or kazoo solo), lead singer/guitarist Kerry Alexander has such a Midwestern 'polite and happy to be here' energy that she's instantly endearing to the audience and by that point, you've already bought in. Mesmerizing the Concord audience over their eight song set, the band worked in crowd favorites 'My Heart, Your Heart', 'Tpa', and 'Midway' before closing out their time with their 2023 single 'It Hurts'.

On Y2K night, an evening celebrating a look at the not too recent past, Summer Salt was a fitting inclusion on the bill. With a breezy, laid back sound to their pop rock style, they feel like a throwback to the days where all music had to do was make people feel good and celebrate all the good things in life. Listening to Summer Salt play sounds and feels like hanging out on the beach in the California sun, even though the quartet hails from Austin. Their set was fun, it was upbeat, and as a contrast to the heavy emo feelings that the headline band was known to dabble in, it felt like being able to come up for a breath of fresh air or three and being able to center yourself with good vibes before returning to real life's problems and heartaches.

I can't listen to Mom Jeans music without thinking of The Beatles. They have that same style Lennon and McCartney did where they would take sad, emotional lyrics and wrap them up in upbeat pop music so that you might not realize how brutal some of the songs are until you listen a few times. This is something the band really perfected on their third album Sweet Tooth, which they tapped for their first five songs on the night. And if you just look at lyrics from those songs on paper, you'd think you were at a show with an overbearing sense of sadness and moping around:

"I've honestly never felt this lousy in my life before"

"I'm such a fucking piece of shit, and you hate me for it"

"I miss you so goddamn much it aches."

Funny thing is, the exact opposite is the case when it comes to the vibe of a Mom Jeans show as the band hits the stage (although the thought of a bunch of sad millennials shoegazing and moping about while wearing bright orange camouflage is actually very funny to me). From the beginning notes of 'What's Up?' and steamrolling through songs like 'Something Sweet', 'Hippo in the Water' and 'White Trash Millionaire', the energy both onstage and off was absolutely wild. If the band jumped around onstage, the crowd tried to jump higher. When Eric Butler would get around to any of the countless singalong choruses the band has to their name, the audience would try and drown him out, all while crowd surfing and circle-pitting at levels rivaling a basement hardcore show.

Equal parts punk rock show and group therapy session, Mom Jeans live shows are the perfect opportunity to let all that baggage out. Sure, their songs touch on heavy subjects like heartache and anxiety along with all the other emo staples, but their music (and especially their live shows) are fueled by collective release, having a group of 3,000+ fans all singing/screaming along wearing their hearts on their collective sleeves. There's something therapeutic about an entire venue coming together as one singing things like "I spent the last ten minutes inside my car/tears streaming at the rearview" during '10 Minutes' or "I'm a stupid piece of shit that doesn't have any friends/the only two things I really can talk to/are my PlayStation and my dog" on 'PICKLE BART!' as one, knowing that everyone goes through the same garbage feelings and predicaments in the trash fire that is our slowly collapsing society. And lyrics like that would seem overwrought or just plain fucking sad if the songs weren't so damn catchy.

Keeping the energy rolling the entire night was Sam Kless, who somehow seemed to be playing bass and waving his arms side to side and leading the audience in clapping along simultaneously as if there were three of him and each one had an extra hand somehow. Bouncing all over the stage and acting like he loves Mom Jeans songs every bit as much as the audience, it's almost like he took it as his personal mission to not allow the energy in the room to fall below a 9 for their entire set. Guitarist Bart Thompson, sporting a Cubs t-shirt old enough that he had to have picked it up at a thrift shop that day, charmed the crowd on stage right the entire time all while drummer Austin Carango kept the entire cacophony from going off the rails, pushing each of their songs forward with momentum that ebbed and flowed throughout the night depending on the mood of each song.

The entire band compliments each other so well, but when seeing Mom Jeans perform live, it's Eric Butler that's the x-factor that makes the band truly special. With the quiet demeanor and relaxed look of a guy you could not just have a beer with, but polish off a sixer with and chase with a joint out in the parking lot. And while the songs he's written and performs deal with raw feelings and emotions, he delivers them with such a "fuck it, I'll be alright" attitude that their songs never feel like they're wallowing in self-pity. They're an exploration in how even the shittiest of shitty situations can be viewed through a song that lets you disguise a tough situation as a little fun. Have a few drinks. Pop a gummy. Maybe jump on top of some people or smash your bodies together if you like. At a Mom Jeans show, everyone is welcome and everything is allowed as long as everyone is having a good time.

Sometimes it's just better to do all that dressed as a hot dog (yes, that was the Chicago night 2 theme).

Mom Jeans' tour continues through 4/7. Tickets can be found here.

Mom Jeans. Setlist - Concord Music Hall 3.28.24

What's Up?
Something Sweet
Hippo in the Water
White Trash Millionaire
Circus Town
Crybaby (On the Phone)
Alameda County Fair
*Sobs Quietly*
Shred Cruz
Death Grip
season 9 ep 2-3
Danger Can't
sponsor me tape
Movember
PICKLE BART!
Girl Scout Cookies
Poor Boxer Shorts
Ten Minutes
Edward 40hands
Unknown (New Song)
Scott Pilgrim vs My GPA