When When We Were Young dropped their 2024 lineup, I only barely glanced at it at first. It was all album plays, and I assumed that meant there wasn’t anything surprising in the lineup. Then I looked at the poster again and saw a familiar, blurry image in the corner that looked like Pretty Girls Make Graves’ classic record, The New Romance. Sure enough, someone did what they needed to do to get what I considered to be the greatest band of the early oughts emo revival back together. The band is near the top of my list: “I’d do anything to see them again.” Tour dates opened up, and, sadly, nothing in the Bay Area. So, I used Southwest credit and decided to spend less than 24 hours in Los Angeles.
I first noticed that The Regent Theater is a pretty classy joint. For a band I often saw in the most punk rock of circumstances, it felt weirdly lovely to know that we’ve all grown up and can appreciate a clean bathroom. However, when Cig Corpse came on, their guttural, primal brand of aggressive punk rock threw me back to my late teens when I just wanted a pit, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t know the music. I just needed the heavy and the fast. I couldn’t make out a single lyric, which was fine because the density of the music is what I needed. It was so heavy that the one cover song that they played? It was a battle song from the Yugoslavian army. Oh- in case you were trying to figure it out, a “cig corpse” is another word for cigarette butt.
Seeing Pretty Girls Make Graves in the flesh for the first time in nearly 20 years was surreal. It was the same lineup as their Elan Vital years, and it appeared that time had no impact on them whatsoever. Everyone looked exactly how I remembered them and sounded as fresh and relevant as they always have. Opening their set with the anxious “Chemical Chemical,” a song that builds and builds but never quit drops, never gives you the “release.” I loved this song as a 20-something college kid. But, in recent years, I’ve started working with a psychiatrist on getting medicine to treat my cornucopia of mental health issues (Anxiety? OCD? ADHD? ASD? Chronic insomnia? I’ve got it all!), and realizing that this song might actually about the insane process of figuring out what meds are right and the difficulties along the way. It’s awful, and I may have started to cry a little when I realized what this song was about, with Andrea Zollo right in front of me, emitting her goddamn heart out with a different passion than she did when she was 25, but still a ferocious passion.
We were treated to a set that spanned the bulk of their career, only leaving out their exceptional self-titled EP that I literally bought off the band outside their tour station wagon after seeing them play Slim’s opening for Bratmobile and De Facto many moons ago. Many of the older songs felt like they had a new relevance in the current climate, especially leading up to the scariest election in my lifetime so far. Zollo’s eyes started watering as during “This Is Our Emergency,” a song that rang so true in 2024 that I started getting goosebumps. By about this time in the set, there was also a clear shift with Zollo. I think what was happening finally dawned on her. The audience knew every lyric and responded with a passionate, energized, and very kind fervor. People are bouncing and dancing safely and with consideration, and when she gave the usual “We appreciate you coming to see us again after all these years” speech, she truly meant it. It felt like we were giving back what she needed. It was like we were watching somebody achieve peak catharsis in real time.
The main set ended with “Speakers Push The Air.” My all-time favorite song about the joy of finding music that means something to you. It felt great, but the final encore song was another song off the band’s amazing (and so sadly out of print) Good Health, “Sad Songs Por Vida,” which caused a big explosion in the crowd, spawning a circle pit with my fellow “olds.” It was a beautiful night. I’m glad I made the trip, and I really hope this isn’t the end of Pretty Girls Make Graves. I really needed that, and I suspect the rest of the world needs that, too.
