Touché Amoré tore up NYC on Halloween with Soul Glo, Portrayal of Guilt & Soft Blue Shimmer (pics)
Touché Amoré have always been known for kicking things off with a bang, and that’s exactly what they did at Warsaw in Brooklyn on Halloween night (10/31) when they took the stage and jumped right into “Nobody’s,” the anthemic opener and lead single off their new album Spiral In A Straight Line. The crowd came ready to scream it back like it’s already an established fan fave, and we got plenty of those too. At this point, Touché are 15 years and six rock-solid albums in, and they crafted a setlist for last night’s show that touched on every album and treated almost all of them equally. Songs from the new album went up against stone cold classics from beloved LPs like Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me and Stage Four, and there was never a single lull in energy from the band or the crowd.
As always, Touché were a well-oiled machine. Nick Steinhardt and Clayton Stevens’ gorgeous, interlocking guitars filled the room, drummer Elliot Babin and bassist Tyler Kirby’s rhythm section packed as much of a punch as ever, and Jeremy Bolm remains the band’s heart-on-sleeve leader, a commanding frontperson who spills his guts for 22 songs straight and induces emotional screamalongs from the crowd during each one. No matter how many Touché Amoré shows you see, it just feels like they’re winning you over all over again every single time.
This particular Touché Amoré show was also, to quote the band, an especially emotionally charged, cathartic night, as it was exactly 10 years since the night that Touché were performing on stage at The Fest in Gainesville and Jeremy received a missed call from his brother Chris letting him know that their mother had passed. Her death became the core inspiration for Stage Four, including the very timely “New Halloween,” which got an especially loud cheer last night, and the deeply emotional “Flowers and You.” At this show, Jeremy had flowers on his mic stand, and then they played “Flowers and You” as the final pre-encore song of the night, Jeremy brought his brother Chris on stage to sing it together.
The Warsaw show was the fourth to last show on Touché’s headlining tour, and they put together a great lineup for this tour, including their heavy, intense friends Soul Glo and Portrayal of Guilt and a dreamier indie rock band that they’d never met before this tour, Soft Blue Shimmer. “I think we like to build tours to where whoever is opening is sort of like, it all melds together into whatever our band sounds like,” Jeremy told us in a recent interview. “So it’s like you get the sort of dream-poppy shoegazey leanings with them, and then the hyper-aggressiveness with the rest of the stuff, and then eventually it’s I think an amalgamation of what the hell we are.”
Pictures of all four bands by Rob Menzer continue below, along with some video and Touché’s setlist. The tour hits DC tonight (11/1), Philly on Saturday (11/2), and then wraps up in Boston on Sunday (11/3).
For more on the new record, read Touché Amoré are still climbing.
Touché Amoré @ Warsaw – 10/31/24 Setlist (via)
Nobody’s
Art Official
Nine
Praise/Love
Reminders
And Now It’s Happening in Mine
Uppers/Downers
Come Heroine
Honest Sleep
Hal Ashby
Face Ghost
New Halloween
Disasters
Harbor
Palm Dreams
Savoring
~
Pathfinder
Rapture
Force of Habit
Flowers and You
Encore:
Limelight