The Sidekicks played Baby's with Roger Harvey, All Dogs and Cayetana, who covered New Order (video, pics)

January 25, 2015

photos by Amanda Hatfield, words by Andrew Sacher

The Sidekicks / All Dogs @ Baby’s All Right – 1/23/15

The Sidekicks released their fourth album, Runners in the Nerved World, last week on Epitaph and began their tour in support of it with a BrooklynVegan-presented release show in NYC on Friday (1/23) at Baby’s All Right with Cayetana, All Dogs and Roger Harvey.

Roger, who only has a few songs out at the moment, kicked off the show and took the chance to preview a handful of songs from his TBA debut album. Recorded, Roger has a lot more layers and instrumentation (that sound most directly influenced by Neutral Milk Hotel, who he covered at the show), but live they were mostly a standard rock trio, save four the two songs they brought out a trumpet player on.

All Dogs were next, with the most traditionally “punk” set of the evening. We were just saying the other day how diverse singer Maryn Jones is with her various projects, but All Dogs gives her the chance to just rock the hardest. We got some highlights off their EPs, their new single “Georgia,” and one song ended with Maryn incorporating a punked-up rendition of the chorus to Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs.” They were great, and the place was packed for them.

Cayetana

It stayed packed for their past tourmates Cayetana, who really do just get better every time I see them. Their live show is so sharp, and singer Augusta Koch’s voice cuts through over the music in a way that indie rock bands of their style can tend to shy away from. They played most of their 2014 debut, Nervous Like Me, and included a cover of New Order‘s “Age of Consent,” which they said they’d never played live before. They did that cover again at their Philly show the following night, which you can watch a video of below.

Finally The Sidekicks wrapped up the night with their headlining set that began on a high note (new album opener “Hell Is Warm”) and pretty much stayed on that level the whole time. The crowd actually seemed a little smaller for them than Cayetana and All Dogs, but The Sidekicks also had the biggest fans — a handful of people up front were pushing/moshing and yelling along the whole time. Their new album is a new direction from the band, ditching their punk roots more than ever before (not that 2012’s Awkward Breeds is exactly a Ramones album or anything), and sounding more like the first two Band of Horses and first three Shins albums. But unlike most bands who came in Band of Horses’ wake, The Sidekicks do have that strong punk background and it made their live show all the more exciting. They mastered the art of being a live band years ago, but adding in the widescreen grandiosity of these new songs made for the most unstoppable Sidekicks set I’ve seen yet.

More pictures from Baby’s, and the Cayetana video from Philly, below…

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Roger Harvey