Whitt's End opened, and I'll say it straight; they are one of the biggest acts in this scene right now, and about ten seconds in you stop wondering why. Saxon and Jarvis Whittaker on vocals and guitar, Ferdie Ramos on drums. They move like a band that's done this a thousand times, because they have.

I should be upfront; they're not really my lane any more. I came up emo and then punk and rock and roll got hold of me and never gave me back, and the rawring twenties revival mostly leaves me cold. But Whitt's End nail the exact thing that revival keeps missing, and you'd have to be deaf or jealous not to hear it. Jarvis does things on the guitar the afternoon had no right to. Saxon sings like the quiet ones are the songs you should be scared of, this weight sitting under everything, so even the swayers down the front shut up to listen. They've got a heavier number they call their White Boy Rap that got a crowd which came to sit down actually moving. A few blokes kicked off a half serious pit near the end, which made no fucking sense for the register and total sense for the band, because that's the Whitt's End trick; they make more energy than the room was built to hold.

I'd caught them once before, at SkatePunk last year, a Deadtrigger show, and that night could not have been more different; a packed room, every kid in 2005 cosplay losing their minds, the floor moving. I didn't see the full set then. But it was the same band I was watching now, and that's the whole point. Packed room or empty park, Whitt's End play it the same. You could feel the gap between what this band is and what this gig was handing them. Put these thirty minutes in a dark room at ten at night in front of people who paid to be there and it's a different conversation. They were too good for a skate demo. They played like nobody had told them.

change correction

Change Correction went second. First gig ever, pulled in last minute after a bigger name dropped out, and you could hear all of it. Brand new. Barely rehearsed. The name's a bit rich, given nothing got corrected.

But the bones are there. A solid snare player, a metal spine under something straining towards punky rock and roll, and a bass drum distorting so hard it was basically a fourth member, adding more than anything they pulled off on purpose. Two songs told me they've got it in them if they want it. Gimme Space had a real hook; that's the single the day they're ready to cut one. Take Back had actual punk in it; that's the b-side. Stage presence sat at zero, every one of them welded to the fretboard like the frets might bolt without them. Fine. Play fifty more of these, learn to own a room instead of surviving one, and we'll talk.

liasis

Liasis closed, and by then half the park had gone home. Coed hardcore, technical as anything, and the maybe fifteen people still standing went harder than rooms three times the size. There's a thing that happens when a hardcore band plays to almost nobody; everyone left is IN it. No phones up, no one hanging at the back being too cool to commit. You're in or you're gone, and these fifteen were in.

The guitarists were fingering the absolute shit out of their fretboards. The drummer hit the kit like it owed him rent. Dylan did what the good hardcore vocalists do, which is talk otherwise sensible people into losing their minds. They were tight, even if they played the exact set I'd caught a few days before, so the surprise had worn off for me if not for the fifteen. The breakdowns came off the concrete instead of four walls and rang out flat and strange across the park, and by the end the lot of us were on the ground getting our breath back like we'd actually been somewhere.

afterwards

I won't lie to you and call it a great gig. It wasn't. The afternoon slot killed whatever it could have been, the promo barely existed, the crowd was thin and half accidental, and the event had no clue what it was beyond bands playing while a bloke ran skate demos. Schema Collective do real work for this community and I'll say that with no but attached. This one just had no centre.

This was one of the first gigs I'd been to since the Big Break, the night I ran back on the ninth of April, and the comedown off that was still on me. There were people in that scattered little crowd who don't talk to me any more, and one who came over to make sure I knew it. The old me would have taken that as the exit; I used to leave the second a room got hard. I kept my distance and I stayed, partly because the bands deserved at least one person watching properly, and partly because walking out the moment something stops being perfect is a habit I'm DONE with.

Whitt's End played a sold out room that wasn't there. Liasis closed like the concrete was a stage worth bleeding on. Change Correction got up at their first gig ever, in front of a crowd that didn't come for them, and went through with it. The gig deserved none of them. Not one of them played like they knew it.