Show Review: Audrey Heartburn, Dagwood, Minus Points, Better Living at Unruly Collective. February 3rd, 2024.
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“Jesus Christ Danny DeVito, how’d you get out of New Jersey” -Better Living
February 4, 2024
It’s Saturday night and we’re at Unruly Collective to see Audrey Heartburn, Dagwood, Minus Points, and Better Living. Not much else to say so let’s just get into it.
Audrey Heartburn’s lead singer was a visual mystery. Did you break your arm? If so, how? Some answers were provided, he belted out their songs with a broken collarbone. Broken how, we can’t remember. But this left the group without a bassist. Their solution was to split the guitarists signal into a guitar and a bass amp. Pretty inventive. Their songs were blisteringly fast, fast enough to risk breaking a bone.
Dagwood was next with all bones intact, though their bassist nearly rolled an ankle falling off the ever-so-slightly elevated stage. These fun songs were like a cutout magazine collage, in the sense that each member had a distinct flair to their playing, but it all glued together into one piece nicely. Before the final song the crowd was chanting “DAGWOOD, DAGWOOD, DAGWOOD, DAGWOOD”.
We had to double take sometime around this point when someone in the audience was taking photos... with a Nintendo DS. Didn’t get the chance to chat but are very curious as to how those turned out. If you’re reading this please consider sharing those one of a kind artifacts with us at rrratcitywriters@gmail.com.
Minus Points was third on the bill and we’re giving them extra points, an A for effort. Early on the frontman proclaimed “I DRANK A FOUR LOKO BEFORE MY SET” to the loudest applause break of the evening. This trio was bouncy, sonically, metaphorically, metaphysically, literally. Something about the performance was slightly unhinged, bonus points for that.
Better Living ended the night with a bang, an often thrashing cacophony of noise. The kick drum slid forward a foot or two every song and had to be dragged back into position. This band was full send, every note played with 110% commitment. Songs were thick yet electric. One was described beforehand with this: “We got a couple songs about New Jersey. This one’s about New Jersey’s finest. It’s called Danny Devito.”. This track turned out to be our favorite, ending in a chanting chorus of “DANNY, DANNY DEVITO. DANNY, DANNY DEVITO.”
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