Things Get Silly With Silly Goose at The 7th Street Entry
I've been on one of the most amazing benders I've had in a long time. From the magic that happened over the weekend at the Snow & Flurry festival to the surprise of Holywatr on Monday night at The Fine Line, I feel like the shows have been on point whether I knew what to expect or not. I had a rough idea of what I was walking into on Tuesday night at the 7th Street Entry, but honestly, I was almost there as a joke. Okay, maybe "joke" isn't the right word, but there was a lot of hype around the headlining act for various reasons, and I just had to see them for myself. I expected a rowdy show, but I underestimated just how rowdy, and how amazing, it would be.
I knew I had made the right choice in show as soon as opening act MUTTLEE took the stage. The brainchild of Dublin-raised Levi Evans, this group had a sound that was very Bob Vylan meets Limp Bizkit. Okay, don't laugh and don't instantly turn off of this band because I'm bringing up Bizkit. We all love to hate on that band and make all the jokes, but ultimately, they did something completely new and innovative, and they don't get the credit they deserve. When I reference Limp Bizkit or nu-metal/rap-metal in this review, I am not doing it to be funny. That's what some of the show was, and it's time that we lose the stigma on those things, but I digress.
MUTTLEE instantly won over my heart with their politically charged anthems. It wasn't just what they were saying that sang to my soul; it was how they were saying it. Sure, it was eyes on Levi Evans for most of the set, but everyone on stage performed with such grit and angst. You fell into every word and every song they performed, whether you wanted to or not, because they did it with such insane conviction. While watching Levi amp the audience up and power through the all-too-quick set, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen this man before. It wasn't until the morning after that I realized that Levi often joins in the collective called No Fun! - a band that had won over my heart years ago and one that I always revert to when I'm having a bit of a rough day. Although it was definitely a bit more pissed off than the carefree love that radiates from No Fun!'s music, the vibe was the same-- full of life, full of love, and fire.
I was so busy texting everyone I could think of about MUTTLEE that I didn't even notice the stage turn over for the next act or that the room had filled to the brim, but before I knew it, the house lights were going down to make way for Cheem. I'll be honest, the angst and grit from MUTTLEE was hitting the spot in my soul, so when Cheem kicked into their set and brought a bit more of a poppy spice to the night, it took me a second to warm up to them, but I was the only one in that camp. The audience erupted the second this band kicked into their set. It was clear many people in the audience had been waiting for this moment, and they weren't about to miss a single second or note of Cheem.
As mentioned, Cheem's sound was a bit more poppy than what MUTTLEE had laid out, but it still had the same intense vibe. With two vocalists (how early 2000s of them) and a band worthy of a medal for keeping their cool and staying on track as the room erupted, this band seemed to take a little bit of something from everything. From emo to hip-hop, nu-metal to pop-punk, some moments made you bounce to their infectious beats, and others made you want to slam-dance through one of their angsty anthems. The audience was eating it up, and about halfway through the set, we saw our first crowd surfer. Here's the deal-- the 7th Street Entry isn't made for crowd surfers. The ceiling is pretty low and is more like wire rafters than anything else. The audience members who chose to take it to the air caught on quickly and started using these rafters like monkey bars, crawling across the ceiling to the stage, then hopping back into the crowd to do it all over again. I'd seen this a few times before, but it doesn't happen often, and I quickly realized we still had one band left if this was how the audience was reacting to one of the opening acts, what in the hell was going to happen during the headliner?
The answer was mass chaos. Those couple of crowd surfers hanging from the ceiling became a constant stream as Silly Goose closed out the Tuesday night show. Silly Goose is a bit of a buzzy band in certain scenes. Some of this is because of their devotion to nu-metal (which, as mentioned, has a bit of a stigma attached to it, but this band is trying to make that fall off and doing a damn good job at it if you ask me); some of it is because of some of their guerrilla-style pop-up shows, one of which ended with frontman Jackson Foster being arrested last year after an impromptu set outside of a BP gas station in Chicago. Long story short, Silly Goose's live shows are legendary, and I was thrilled to experience them for myself. I thought I was ready. I have been at rowdy shows. I know how to act, where to stand, how to protect my cameras-- this wasn't my first rodeo, yet there I was, standing in my "safe spot" with my jaw on the ground. I had almost completely forgotten about the cameras hanging by my side because the chaos around me was just so much.
It wasn't just people hanging from the rafters that made this set so insane. It was that, mixed with the crowd just inches below them frantically jumping up and down while the band did their best to keep it going on stage, while bodies were coming at them left and right (this is a super intimate venue, so there is no pit or any separation between stage and audience, so what goes up must come down, and down just happened to be the stage area if you weren't paying close attention). It was truly chaos, and it was truly perfect. It was the kind of show where it didn't matter whether you knew the songs. Heck, it didn't matter if you liked the music or not (thankfully, I did, and I think it's safe to assume that a lot of the kids singing along to every word did too). This was a show that you felt more than heard. It wasn't meant to be a spectator sport. Even if you weren't one of the kids hanging from the rafters or shoving your way through the pit that had taken over the floor, you were a part of the show. You were inevitably either standing there with your arms up to make sure someone didn't fall from the ceiling or you were busy in your own little world, moving and grooving to the infectious beat of Silly Goose's songs. You were forgetting about every stress in your life. You forgot about drama, work, family issues, love life issues; you forgot about everything because, on Tuesday night at the 7th Street Entry, you were allowed to be nothing more than a Silly Goose, and that's what made the show so perfect.
