Zykos

The Good Life / Make Believe / Zykos: live in Philadelphialive in Philadelphia (2005)
Saddle Creek Records

Reviewer Rating: 5

Contributed by: nocarsgoKevin Hare
(others by this writer | submit your own)
Published on May 17th 2005Thursday, May 12th. A nice, cool spring day in Philadelphia at the First Unitarian Church, one of my personal favorite venues. The atmosphere of the place is awesome. The Church is, well, a church. Shows are played in the basement of the church. Recently, the Church has had some huge shows, includi.

Thursday, May 12th. A nice, cool spring day in Philadelphia at the First Unitarian Church, one of my personal favorite venues. The atmosphere of the place is awesome. The Church is, well, a church. Shows are played in the basement of the church. Recently, the Church has had some huge shows, including the Bouncing Souls.

The doors opened around 8 o'clock. Quickly, the first opener, Austin, Texas' Zykos, took the stage. Zykos is basically an indie pop band with a female keyboardist whom my friend kept calling the "hottest girl ever." I thought she was just alright. Anyway, I took this time to browse the records that are sold in the back. I was basically just bored during their set. While some songs showed promise, the singer's voice was awful and, therefore, ruined the songs. The last song they played, however, had an extremely infective keyboard part that couldn't help but make you dance.

I then took a spot on the side of the stage in time for Make Believe. I don't know too much about them, but I do know that Make Believe features at least a few of the members of Joan Of Arc, including vocalist Tim Kinsella. Before the show, Kinsella seemed very calm and mellow. I guess that all went out the window after stepping on stage and having a few beers. As soon as the set started, Kinsella began to move around the stage wildly, frequently crouching down, lying on the floor, and moving his arms wildly. Meanwhile, their bassist was bouncing with every beat while the guitarist just stood there, playng away. Kinsella was basically a loose cannon on stage, pressing on heads, lassoing the audience, and, at one point, trying to rip off an audience member's shirt. It was a very interesting preformance.

Finally, the Good Life went on. They set up fairly quickly. Then, the rest of the band left the stage, leaving just vocalist Tim Kasher (with an acoustic guitar in hand) and drummer Roger Lewis on stage. Going into the show, I was hoping that they would play "Inmates," the nine-minute song about a girl who decided that she was done with a relationship, but didn't expect them to play it. Well, with the first chords of the set, I quickly realised that I was wrong. The band played the full song, with the other members of the band taking the stage for their various parts.

I quickly realised that Kasher had the crowd in the palm of his hands. It was clear that the man knows how to work a crowd. He would frequently make witty comments in response to things yelled by the crowd. For instance, someone in the crowd asked Kasher to "eat his anus." Kasher then went on a tirade about how he would love to take the relationship with the crowd member to that level. Then during "Album Of the Year," he substituted "and she kissed me on the mouth" with "and she kissed me on the anus."

The band blazed through all of their hits during the 1 and a 1/2 hour set, including the aforementioned "Album Of The Year," "Notes In His Pocket," and "Lovers Need Lawyers," as well as some older songs from their second full-length, Black Out. Kasher also preformed a song that he wrote in 1994 by himself. The set ended with Kasher jumping on the drummer and knocking off the drum set.

Overall, it was a great show. It was apparent that Tim Kasher just has fun playing music, and it definitely pays off.

Login to rate this album

People who liked this also liked:

Please login or register to post comments.What are the benefits of having a Punknews.org account?

Share your opinion by posting comments on the stories that interest you
Rate music and bands and help shape the weekly top ten
Let Punknews.org use your ratings to help you find bands and albums you might like
Customize features on the site to get the news the way you want.

Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not respon sible for them in any way. Seriously.

Anonymous (June 23, 2005)

its a sham.

Anonymous (June 20, 2005)

You are a fool; go educate yourself. Learn how to type. You may want to post the comment a third time and include the apostrophe in the first word, "it's".
Someday you will evolve.

Anonymous (June 16, 2005)

its an original voice if you think blowing your nose into the mic is original

Anonymous (June 16, 2005)

its and original voice if you think blowing your nose into the mic is original

Anonymous (May 25, 2005)

The singer of Zykos has one of the coolest, most unique voices around. I love a singing voice that is original and challenges people's standard preference, but is also catchy at the same time. Perhaps punk news would rather hear Billie Joe Armstrong knockoffs. And don't write an ignorant & sexist review tearing down a great band out on the road working their ass off if you're in the next room browsing for Alkaline Trio records. You'll be eating your poorly written words later.

fritobandito (May 21, 2005)

I saw this when they hit DC, it was rad. I had heard of, but not heard, Zykos, and they blew the roof off the place. Really didn't care too much for Make Believe (we were taking bets on how many different drgus Kinsella was on, actually). The Good Life was awesome, even better than last time I saw them.

And then we missed the metro, it stopped at 11:50 instead of 12. So we had to get a cab back to Vienna. sigh.

Anonymous (May 21, 2005)

While we're focusing on negativity, let me say this is the dumbest review I've ever read. Keep reviewing MxPx, Green Day, and the Bouncing Souls - leave the more challenging music to someone else. punknews.org is the ghetto of all internet e-zines, or maybe it's just Kevin Hare's writing.

Anonymous (May 18, 2005)

"Zykos is basically an indie pop band with a female keyboardist whom my friend kept calling the "hottest girl ever." I thought she was just alright."

Thanks for fulfilling my expectations for sexism at a Saddle Creek show... You know all of the guys are just there so they can tell the ugly 15 year old girls "yeah, I dig The Good Life" and get their cocks sucked.

-BSD

Anonymous (May 18, 2005)

Totally agree with you on Zykos, voice annoys the shit out of me.

lou (May 18, 2005)

scott, you should get me two tickets to the show in cleveland on thursday. i would be eternally grateful.

Anonymous (May 17, 2005)

make believe was great when i saw them, but i guess you have to be into them to really enjoy their performance. i thought tim was out of his mind/adorable, like i wanted to tie a leash to him and have him freak out on command. sam (guitar) can't really move around much due to his fingerpicking style, but he was really good. if you can't beat em, join em!*

*what?

VitusTinnitus (May 17, 2005)

caught this in DC. Zykos is great and their new album shows a great deal of improvement over their previous release "Comedy Horn." As for Make Believe...well, I like Mike's stuff a lot better than Tim's, and Make Believe reinforced this preference. Kasher really is quite good with a live audience, and manages to make his shows extremely entertaining and even humorous given the depressing lyrical content. But while the show was great and The Good Life is quite enjoyable, I still prefer Cursive and hope that that project will continue.

Anonymous (May 17, 2005)

i saw this tour in chapel hill last week, and i have to say that make believe is the absolute, 100% worst fucking band i have ever seen. there is no doubt in my mind. take the worst band you could imagine and multiply that by 15. seriously. they seemed so worried about being artsy and crazy and interesting that they forgot to play any bearable music...

the good life was great, though. tim kasher the best frontman i have ever seen...

swingline (May 17, 2005)

tim should quit cursive and focus on the good life full time.

Anonymous (May 17, 2005)

The Good Life-song by weezer
Make Believe-latest relase from weezer.

crazy

Anonymous (May 17, 2005)

i saw them in SF just for the velvet teen, but my friends made me stay for the good life. i still think cursive is insanely over-rated and really really boring, so i didn't have expectations. the life was allright though. better than cursive, but still not worth the crazy amount of hype that tim kasher guy gets. he had some good stage commentary though.

stevejonestherealbones (May 17, 2005)

is cursive done?

- jonesy the a bonesy

- stevejones8770@yahoo.com

maverick (May 17, 2005)

I love Tim Kasher as much as the next critic, but man oh man, the Good Life were so boring when I saw them last summer. Then again, that was before the new album came out, and they played a bunch of new songs I did not at the time know, so take that with a grain of salt.

Regardless, I think I'll be skipping their show in Cleveland this Thursday to go see Neil Hamburger instead.

-Scott

Inspection12e (May 17, 2005)

Zykos is great. I wish I hadn't waited til early 2005 to get their album that was released last year.