Tonight a rainbow of coloured hair descends upon The Barrowlands for a night of the newest wave of pop punk.
It would be easy for those of my generation to ignore this bass-player-optional subgenre because wasn’t everything better back in the early 00’s (when I was cool)? Sometimes you have to remember that there’s a Ramones’ fan slagging Green Day, a Green Day fan slagging Blink, a Blink fan slagging new Green Day, and they’re all slagging anything with a synth in it.
The truth is that if you take a breath and try to give the kids a chance, they might come up with something you’re into. These new bands are the same age that the aforementioned bands were when they made something that captured the emotions of the fans back then. I bet some jaded music critic was up in arms that they didn’t have a rhythm guitarist.
It’s immediately clear that this is another show that could be a co-headliner. There’s a line stretching back around beyond St Luke’s and a lot of those involved are wearing Stand Atlantic gear. The Australian pop punk quartet are the only support for tonight but by the end of their set, I’m satisfied that’s all that was needed. I could have sworn they had two guitarists but it turns out it was only David Potter moving around the stage so fast he could have easily been two men.
Frontwoman Bonnie Fraser traverses the stage confidently and is able to direct the crowd to form the biggest circle pit I’ve seen a support act achieve. What’s happening on stage is a modern, fresher, crisper, Paramore that makes the original look over the hill, quite honestly. The fans are moshing and crowd surfing and that seldom happens with the first band of the night on any tour… so it’s safe to say we have something special on our hands here.
Waterparks walk onto the stage to a roar that you’d hear at the likes of a Harry Styles concert. It’s instantly clear that they’re among friends…nay…devout fans here. Waterparks’ style is more pop than punk but it has a lot of the new tricks thrown in from the likes of hip hop cross overs such as Machine Gun Kelly.
Frontman Awsten Knight is very impressive with the speed and flow of his vocals and lead guitarist Geoff Wigington does his best to fill the stage although it’s a tall order for one man. Especially when Awsten picks up guitar duties and is stuck to the mic stand, this is when they could benefit from that increasingly elusive bass player on the stage.
Despite all my grumblings about bass players becoming ever more endangered nowadays, this is a really fun set. There’s a real sense of abandon and the crowd don’t have a care in the world when singing along with this band. There’s a singalong of ‘Happy Birthday’ for a crew member and some acoustic versions of fan favourites played.
The fans really are the heroes of this show. I could stand here all night and internally struggle with the new form of my favourite genre – but seeing how much these fans love this band makes me realise that I’m the one who is wrong. If I were to listen to waterparks in a room on my own, I probably wouldn’t get it. But tonight as I saw all of the signs and soft toys being waved, every word being sung along to, and even tears of joy from people seeing these three boys on a stage… it makes sense.
Just as I used to camp outside the very same venue waiting on my pop punk heroes pulling up in their tour bus a couple of decades ago, the fans here have done exactly the same. Now, my childhood heroes are filling stadiums and headlining festivals and it’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to accept that Waterparks will be doing the same in the not too distant future. The smart move would be to follow them now.
Photos by Catching Light Photography
