Sound Reverbs through Amsterdam Bar

Four bands fill Friday night to the brim with sound.

Fresh snow fall welcomes in a quiet hush over the world as every step is muted beneath every foot. But on November 3, outside the live music venue Amsterdam Bar and Hall, the chilled air was filled with the leaking sound of bands Boston Manor, Can’t Swim, A Will Away and Have Mercy.

 

The show is only one stop in a tour promoting several albums across the band’s involved. Have Mercy, Can’t Swim and A Will Away are supporting their albums from earlier this year “Make the Best of It”, “Fail You Again” and “Here Again,” respectively. Boston Manor’s most recent album, “Be Nothing” debuted last year.

 

For Boston Manor, this is their third time performing in Minnesota, and their second in the same venue at Amsterdam Bar. According to the band’s vocalist Henry Cox, returning to familiar venues isn’t rare on the tour, but that after a long year it felt like coming full circle to see the same stage again.

At this point, after this tour and several previous adding up to around five years with their bandmates, Boston Manor has spent a lot of time on the road playing nearly nightly.

“We love it,” Cox said. “It’s why we started playing in a band [but] we’re f*cking knackered.”

Off all the shows, from stage to stage, Cox noticed a pattern in how audiences settle into the venue.

“For the first songs, people are still getting used to their surroundings, but there’s a moment where it all kind of clicks.”

That moment is his favorite when playing, and it was clear on Friday’s show.

Audience members coming out of the whistling chill outside into the heat of the venue may have taken a beat to adjust, but once inside they were enveloped in a flight of rock music dubbed alternative, emo, indie, pop punk and eighties. The blend of the four bands fit together.

Boston Manor, Can’t Swim and A Will Away are some of the best bands out right now and some of our personal favorites,” Brian Swindle, Have Mercy guitarist and vocalist, said in promotion of the tour. “I can’t believe they are coming out with us and that it all worked out.”

With four different sets, all four bands rocked inside the brick hall with no sign of mid-tour tiredness in the midst of their 30 stop run.

As everyone reeled with another snowfall, this one sticking in the descending temperatures, the thundering sound of Amsterdam Bar and Hall was a haven of dancing body heat and reverberating sound.