Surfbort at Market Hotel (photo by Kate Hoos)
Who here among us doesn’t love a punk show? You’ll never catch me saying “not me” to that question and so you won’t be surprised to know I was thrilled to be at this show, packed from top to bottom with heavy hitters. I always seem to find myself at Surfbort shows in the middle of the winter and they always warm up my heart when nothing else seems to crack the icy veneer enshrouding it.
Energetic garage punks Dog Date took the stage first, setting a fever pitch right from the get-go with their song “Frog.” As their dual drummers smashed and bashed through the quarter note triplets at the mid point of the song, the audience was snared, ready to party hard for the rest of the night. Having only recently seen them for the first time (see pics here), I was doubly thrilled to find out they were on this bill. (I never want to miss any of their shows ever again in fact but alas, adulting must happen and so I will take what I can get.)
Pussy Gillette took the stage next and brought the tempo down a notch with a set of smoldering garage. Lead singer/bassist Masani Camacho telling the audience at one point “If you’re a sad motherfucker, this one’s for you baby!” I don’t know about anyone else, but I felt seen in that moment. Their special brand of old school punk swagger was the perfect counter point of the hyper fuzz of Dog Date, both garage acts but on different ends of the spectrum. Camacho also had the very best iteration of “see us in the back for merch” that I’ve ever heard, declaring “You can’t buy our record at Wal-Mart so come see me at the merch table suckas!”
Experimental no wave outfit cumgirl8 were in the direct support spot and played a set of raw goth twinged post punk, pulling from their 2020 self titled debut and 2021’s RIPcumgirl8. They perfectly blend crunchy with groovy for a mesmerizing and unique sound. At the very end of their set, on the brink of coming undone, they asked “is there time for one more?” before putting down their instruments and completely changing things up, playing a several minutes long glitchy techno rave outro, complete with a toy keyboard in the mix.
cumgirl8 at Market Hotel
By the time Surfbort took the stage, the room had grown hot and steamy, and the crowd was right on the edge of erupting into chaos. And when the first notes rang out, erupt they did, a pure frenzy ensuing for much of the next hour. Bodies flying, lyrics lovingly shouted back and forth from singer Dani Miller to the crowd and from the crowd back to her, the band raging on stage behind her, there’s no other way to go than hard when in the midst of Surfbort.
This was my first time seeing them in the “after times,” and as such the first time with their new five piece lineup. The songs sounded as tight as ever and the tempos even punchier than I remember from the last time I saw them in 2019. They pulled largely from their kickass 2021 album Keep On Truckin’ but they also pulled out some classics like “Slushy,” “Bedbugs,” and “ACAB,” along with two personal favs, “Les Be In Love,” and “Hippie Vomit Inhaler.”
Times in 2022 are weird and fucking hard, but nights like these are what make me want to keep going. Afterall, there’s nothing quite like the rowdy shenanigans of a Surfbort show, and paired with three smoking openers, from start to finish this was one for the books AND the soul.
Scroll down for more pics of the show (photos by Kate Hoos)
DOG DATE
PUSSY GILLETTE
CUMGIRL8
SURFBORT
