Live Review: Dan Cribb

Openers The Kuillotines and Dux & Downtown were punk. Just punk. It was a long bill for an EP launch, and both acts secured the stage. Penultimate supports FAIM are hot shit – drawing a sizeable herd of Rosemount punters in from the cold with their angry, Smith Street Band-got-drunk-and-tried-to-deck-you type attitude. Their live act traded spots on-stage like Pokémon cards: no two band members had the same instrument for more than like a couple of tracks in a row, except the drummer, but seriously, who wants to be a drummer? Nah, jokes. FAIM exploded.

Alright, it would have been better to see more of The Decline's fanbase out in support of the Cribbster: his set was pulled straight from '90s punk America, a highway between him and Henry Rollins. Dan Cribb's The Memories Last is a great EP – we saw this live. Cribb's the bass part of The Decline, but he handled his acoustic guitar like he'd gone to school with the thing, and his vocals were sexy crisp. Opening with Drover's Track, Cribb's sound is lighter than The Decline – more acoustic. Still punk, very much American new-wave. Part One followed; his EP doesn't have a track called Part Two yet, which probably means you should stay tuned for more. New York was a new track debuted live; Cribb's journeys across the US have yielded much good for him (witness: a David Liebe Hart band slot in the near feature), and this hitherto unheard piece clearly drew on these experiences. A cover of Illinois threesome Alkaline Trio's Mercy Me followed. 

This douchebag jumped on stage during I Think I'm Still Drunk. My photographer and I were going to jump on-stage and deck him, but we held back because we didn't know whether or not he was Dan's mate and jumping on-stage during a gig and being a jerk is admittedly a pretty punk thing to do. Turns out he wasn't Dan's mate, but the Cribbster was cool about the whole thing. “It's not even like we're Green Day, man,” said Cribb. “You're not going to get famous or anything.” Don't speak too soon, dude. You'll be famous yet. Cribb dedicated a song to his girlfriend, and then signed off with It Never Ends, again from the EP.