Tastes Like Sweat: The 20 Best Shows I Saw in 2024
Catch you next time Sabrina, Doechii, Charli, Cupcakke, High on Fire
Sock it 2 her: Missy Elliott at Philly’s Wells Fargo Center
I’m not writing about 20 shows every year. But I made the financially unwise gambit to significantly pare down my bucket list in 2024, which anyone who knows my origin story can tell you is centered between missing the chance to ever see Prince and extremely heightened anxiety now that we know pandemics still happen. I succeeded and caught more shows than I ever have in my life, especially big-ticket ones. You’ll note legends at the ages of 65, 78, and 74 in the upper reaches, meaning they were definitely not too little too late. And you’ll note it was a fucking incredible year for live music if Wednesday, Soul Coughing, Pixies, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the great Hole cover band All Violet, Wussy Duo, Pylon Reenactment Society, KMFDM, Undeath, Built to Spill, and the Folk Implosion in a fucking backyard all got shut out of the top 20, many of which only because it was just an unfair year with more expensive competition than I ever expect to see again. Though at least two of the bucket-listers if illness or worse doesn’t intervene I certainly will. Here were 20 times I felt alive for the right (re: non-painful) reasons this year.
20. The Chisel (5/6 Broken Goblet Brewing, Bensalem, PA)
Rancid (see below) have got the tunes, and it’s still immensely fun to shout along with “Roots Radicals” or “The 11th Hour,” but I’ll never see them in their heyday. The Chisel are maybe the most songful punks working, though onstage you can’t always tell in the smear of off-key gang choruses splattering off their oi whirlwind like a blender accidentally turned on without the lid. Cal Graham stalks and preens out front like your throat will be next in his teeth. Charlie Manning-Walker’s riffs are just a bit too clever to not get mud on them in the blur of their live set. I say they haven’t hit their ceiling, and I’m glad I caught ‘em when.
19. Rosie Tucker (9/27 Kung Fu Necktie, Philadelphia, PA)
Chordings this twitchy and complicated could only emanate from a power trio, and Rosie and their spry drummer reminded us they rock first and foremost, respectably knotty vocal runs be damned. They’re also DIY to the core, with no interest in what the “hit” might be (they played it four minutes in), which doesn’t mean they lack showmanship; a story about their tough grandma brought the house down. Tighter than Graham Parker squeezing out a spark and a whole lot readier for the future.
18. Smashing Pumpkins (8/9 Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA)
Sometimes it’s just practical. I’m never gonna pay to watch a Smashing Pumpkins set longer than 14 songs, and not without a pledged promise that ten will be greatest hits. I’ll permit an 11th to be an Achtung Baby cover, under the condition that Billy Corgan bring his co-ed wrestling company up onstage to distract from one of the new songs. I’d also never seen Rancid, who dutifully stuck to Out Come the Wolves and got a little lost in the stadium’s breadth like any respectable punk band. Green Day were pros, to their detriment. Even a full romp through Dookie couldn’t make me want to ever hear American Idiot again in full, and they were a lot less spontaneous than when they set everything on fire at the 1997 Y100 Feztival. Tré Cool peacocking through “All by Myself” was a rare glimmer of their youth, but it was the middle act who got everything right just by having “Today,” “1979,” and the underrated death-disco opener “Everlasting Gaze” in their arsenal even if Billy Corgan oscillates through a variety of drunken cadences. Jimmy Chamberlain still mans his kit like an octopus and even “Zoo Station” kind of grunged-up nicely. I never need to see them again.
17. Sleater-Kinney (3/18 Theatre of Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA)
I last caught my last active favorite band a decade ago at the accursed Terminal 5, so even without Janet Weiss I was elated to see a routine S-K throwdown (Dad also brought me a gummy). No one wails like Corin Tucker or Pete Townshends like Carrie Brownstein. No one’s got “Entertain,” “Dig Me Out,” or “One Beat” in their slambook. And that’s just the encore. Routine wailing is the pleasure of Little Rope, a quality batch of micro-Zep, and highs like “Needlessly Wild” and “Untidy Creature” went down seamlessly betwixt “Start Together” and “The Fox.” They’re irreplaceable, they still rock, and they might again equal their peaks, but not since Sonic Youth has a band gotten so many sparks flying off of just spinning their wheels.
16. Danny Brown (3/13 Theatre of Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA)
A decade ago, I watched my favorite rapper of the last decade rock a Bonnaroo crowd with his dankest, stankest anthems: “Blunt After Blunt,” “Smokin & Drinkin’,” etc. But I wasn’t sure how his new accruals of introspective, artier, not to mention soberer, more sonically broadened material would go down with an audience. Expert setlist helped: half a dozen each from his two astonishing 2023 albums, including his busted-siren JPEGMafia productions, everything you’d want to hear off Atrocity Exhibition and Old, one nod apiece to his lyrical apoetheosis XXX and his musical one uknowhatimsayin? just to remind us he made them. His crazy-ass duster-length puffy winter coat helped, too; Missy Elliott vibes never miss. A wordsmith who’s truly about the music, as Kassa Overall’s Rube Goldberg drum fills on “Jenn’s Terrific Vacation” piped in over the PA could attest.
15. Sheer Mag (5/13 First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, PA)
I wish Playing Favorites was more popular all around; not only was it criminally shut out of all year-ends but Churchgoers saved their most rapturous hometown applause for slightly subpar ragers like “Need to Feel Your Love” and “What You Want.” Still, I don’t fault the band for getting their more technically ambitious new compositions out of the way just to give the axemen a break. Tina Halliday shook the earth as usual, and they didn’t cower away from bringing off the six-minute jangle-funk of “Mechanical Garden” or showing off their chops in general, which is a positive pleasure on the new album. The plebes were rewarded — with an all-hands-on-deck “Cum on Feel the Noize” sendoff.
14. Tokyo Police Club (11/15 Brooklyn Bowl, Philadelphia, PA)
Having never seen them before this farewell tour, or heard the band’s name mentioned aloud even once in my entire life, I shared the spectacle of an ecstatic sold-out show with a packed Brooklyn Bowl full of fellow Philly enthusiasts. I knew I liked a lot of their music but didn’t know it that well, couldn’t put faces to it, etc. The experience was euphoric; it was like watching someone else’s favorite band and feeling your understanding (and affection) for them grow throughout the 28-song evening in real time. Dave Monks just couldn’t stop smiling. As he unloaded high after high — “Favourite Food” to “Argentina” to “Your English Is Good” — neither could I.
13. Start Making Sense (6/14 Brooklyn Bowl, Philadelphia, PA)
Anyone who’s seen them will tell you SMS is a cover band like no other, just like Stop Making Sense is a concert film like no other. Should Talking Heads reunite tomorrow, you’re unlikely to get a better show than their acolytes, who’ve mastered the hiccupping athleticism of David Byrne’s prime along with all the funky accoutrements: dancers, percussions, sometimes (but not this time) horns. At this stop, they brought out my childhood pal Julie Slick for “Houses in Motion” and some of the Heads’ headiest grooves. But no one born after 1984 should go without seeing the synchronized jogging of “Life During Wartime” brought to, well, life during wartime.
12. PJ Harvey (9/13 The Met, Philadelphia, PA)
I’d sit through almost any set to get to “Man-Size,” “Dress,” “Down by the Water,” and “To Bring You My Love.” But I’ve lucked out: The Hope Six Demolition Project was engaging if forgettable stuff eight years ago flanked by a full brass section. And 2023’s I Inside the Old Year Dying was Peej’s most spellbinding album in years, a true pleasure to revisit live. It made for an enchanting foreword to a generous second set of all-timers careened out by a voice I’ll never stop paying to hear. Unless you’re buying, of course. Perhaps she can be talked into a a quarter-century of Stories From the City tour?
11. Bikini Kill (9/10 Franklin Music Hall, Philadelphia, PA)
If they played the exact same show I caught last year verbatim, hungover, maybe even lipsynced, our greatest living punk band would probably still be on here. And that wouldn’t be far off; I took greater notice of how many songs Tobi/Kathi sings, and Kathleen took more anecdotal detours, which is always for the better with a band this charismatic. But otherwise it wasn’t that different beyond the fact that blocks away were Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s Philly debate, which created a lot more stress about traveling to the show than it turned out to have warranted. The stress about the election result is just beginning, though. I love this band because they’re still fighting, and still an inspiration to anyone watching who may have lost the will to do the same. Just thinking about them now is giving me reassurance and strength, but I don’t know how. God, what a band. What a force of reckoning and power chords and — as bullshit historical accounts have most cruelly misrepresented them and other outspoken feminists — wild, conscientious good humor.
10. Quasi (6/27 World Cafe Live, Philadelphia, PA)
Front-to-back album anniversary tours are a mixed bag; I’ll need to unpack why Liz Phair playing through Exile in Guyville last year left me lukewarm despite being maybe my all-time favorite rock album (or maybe not). But I think it works better with non-all-time favorites. I love Quasi’s best album, Featuring “Birds,” but I haven’t played it to death, the duo’s almost satirically sour politics have become a lot realer a quarter-century later, and the intensity of two people recreating it from scratch makes it a highwire act live. Especially when half of them is the one-of-one Janet Weiss, who had me tearing up just watching her bang the kit again. (I also realized my cats are inadvertently named after them, minutes after they signed my CD.) This was a couldn’t-miss proposition that just went on and on long after the album, with onetime Jick Joanna Bolme helping electrify “Rockabilly Party” and others. Sam Coomes seemed genuinely taken aback by the fact his certified non-classic has touched so many people and hung around for so long. And you could tell it pushed him to hit his buzzing keyboard harder.
9. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (7/2 Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, Camden, NJ)
I can’t compare the impact of my first Bikini Kill show experience last year to this year’s, because it was first, and it was fucking incredible. But I can say the emotions that welled up in me as Joan Jett subjected an entire amphitheater to “Rebel Girl” as her walkout music hit me a little harder than the second incredible Bikini Kill show I witnessed, and it wasn’t lost on me that there was also a full-circle thing happening with headliner Alanis Morissette as well, who was very good and once considered to be some kind of enemy to riot grrrls in their day. Emotions also welled up in me when Jett subjected an entire amphitheater to the Replacements’ “Androgynous” more than a decade after I first heard her sing it with Against Me! at Terminal 5. These moments didn’t define a bulletproof, no-loss-of-energy set that clearly Jett has done to death for decades — killing it upfront with “Victim of Circumstance,” the reclaimed “Cherry Bomb” and double-reclaimed “Do You Wanna Touch Me,” with the big finish going “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” “Crimson & Clover,” which I somehow forgot about, and “Bad Reputation,” her most important original. But they’re no less part of her iconic oeuvre than “Everyday People.” If not rock’s greatest interpreter because there’s too much competition, she’s definitely punk’s. She is the jukebox herself, the conduit through which all of these highly disparate eras and song-sources become rock ‘n’ roll one and the same, and she loves them all like her children. She also kicks a show’s ass at 66 and doesn’t look or sound terribly older than you remember.
8. Bombino/Etran de L'Aïr (6/28 Sony Hall, New York, NY)
Omara Moctar is a celebrated Tuareg guitar god and he was the more varied and showboating of this Nigerien double-header at Sony Hall, bringing last year’s gorgeous Sahel to life with his quick fingers and a band that hop-skipped through, say, the ska-informed boom bap of “Si Chilan.” (The lad in front who excitedly cried “Agadez!” throughout would concur.) But his warmup brothers in Etran de L'Aïr smoked him. They’ve got one shtick: riffage. Pogoing-up-and-down riffage. Shredding a guitar vamp like human woodchippers. Excepting the unstoppable “Aminidine,” the solid new 100% Sahara Guitar either dampens their 2024 material or their stage magnetism made it flesh. Much as I love the lo-fi debut No. 1, I can’t say their records capture the distorted jolt of their live presence. A must-see if you love the six-string.
7. Les Savy Fav (6/29 Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA)
It’s nothing people who’ve seen them decades before me didn’t already know or say, but the physical experience of Tim Harrington live is more vivid, maybe even more dangerous or frightening than your favorite hardcore band because you just don’t know what the fuck he’s going to do. Climb any railing. Disrobe from a rainbow poncho to a glowing-green stuntsuit. Writhe on the floor while the audience removes his pants. Chug from a pitcher. Expertly weave the longest mic cable in the world through a crowd he spends significantly more time traversing than on the stage. The room is his instrument. But almost none of this would matter if the songs didn’t fuck shit up, and this is the band proffering “The Equestrian,” “Legendary Tippers,” “The Sweat Descends,” and so forth. They’re doing it and doing it and doing it well, so catch them before they can’t. Really, Harrington chances serious injury night by night.
6. Olivia Rodrigo/The Breeders (4/6 Madison Square Garden, New York, NY)
Almost as heartwarming as the lines of mother-and-daughter teams crowding around Madison Square Garden in matching lilac was watching Kim Deal obliterate them with the Pixies’ “Gigantic.” Albini would’ve been proud. But from the opening “Bad Idea Right?” through the legitimately thrashing “Obsessed,” O-Rod didn’t need the help. Eras isn’t my bag and I missed out on the Renaissance tour, so I paid more for one ticket than I ever have in my life to witness the woman behind teenpop’s greatest 1-2 in the moment. Nearly all of her two perfection-adjacent albums were accounted for, as was the undervalued torch song “Can’t Catch Me Now.” She dispatched power-ballad classics (“Vampire,” “Drivers License”) relatively early to get to what really fires her up. Even without introducing the Warped-ready “So American” yet in the tour, a “Brutal”/”Good 4 U”/“All-American Bitch”/“Get Him Back!” piledriver for a finale brought the aural pyrotechnics mere teenpop alone couldn’t deliver.
5. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (8/21 Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA)
I almost became a 40-year-old New Jerseyan who’d never seen Broooce. His recent medical tribulations scared me straight so I threw another $200 at the bucket list and for once being on the fourth(!) level of a stadium wasn’t such a bad fit. If I’m gonna watch the sun disappearing behind the Philly skyline as closely as the performer, it’s best that it’s this guy. Whom no matter what I’d ever read still knocked me out with his relentlessness, his goofball anecdotes, and the breathless pacing of a three-hour-plus set where I missed “Atlantic City” and “No Surrender” climbing up to my seat. I didn’t miss Patti Smith’s “Because the Night,” which he wrote, or “Twist and Shout” which was our reward for not fainting after “The Rising,” “Badlands,” “Thunder Road,” “Born to Run,” “Rosalita,” “Bobby Jean,” “Dancing in the Dark” or special Clarence tribute “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” all in succession. The man was 74 and lapping circles around us all. I underestimated how much of the collective energy generated by the E Street Band onstage would be his own doing. Or how hysterical his double act with Silv, er, Little Steven still could be. The rest of my city was unfazed and ruthless as usual; the Boss got so audibly booed when he mentioned the Giants during “Wrecking Ball,” a song literally about their own fucking stadium, that he recanted and asked “Eagles?”
4. The Magnetic Fields (5/3-5/4 Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA)
About what I just said re: front-to-back album anniversary performances. It’s true that they’ve fared best in my experience with less personalized classics — I adored Cloud Nothings doing all of Attack on Memory at Brooklyn Bowl in 2022 because it’s short, varied, and rocks (also because Speedy Ortiz opened), plus I haven’t played it to death so eight minutes of “Wasted Days” still knocks me unconscious — but 69 Love Songs is no ordinary album. It’s not even three ordinary albums. I’ve played it a ton over the years and I still can’t imagine getting sick of it because there’s just fucking so much there. Wear out half a dozen songs and six new favorites you never noticed crop up. It completely lives up to the mythical perfection of an endless songbook undercut only by the pastiche interstitials like “Experimental Music Love” that pinch you so you know you’re alive. Well, Stephin Merritt and company did all of them (even “Experimental Music Love”). It took two nights and seven people, with my sadly departed friend LD Beghtol missed on the gut-wrenching “All My Little Words” and gut-busting “For We Are King of the Boudoir,” but the idea of bringing the studio-preserved experience of an album to life has never been so fully realized. From Claudia Gonson matching the speeding/slowing of “Reno Dakota” in its syllabically contorted glory to Merritt climbing a ladder on “Yeah, Oh Yeah!” one of many selections where Sam Davol’s sawing cello made an astonishing synth substitute, favorites predictably overflowed, earned mass singalongs, warranted the driest jokes you’ve ever heard in between. And they’re a must-see even when they’re not touring songwriting’s very peak.
3. Missy Elliott/Busta Rhymes/Ciara/Timbaland (8/5 Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA)
Missy’s first-ever headlining tour. It’s about time. (It’s also about time she drops an album, it’s been 20 years.) Ciara’s fired-up, tightly choreographed set deserves its own placing here; no one in that entire arena was happier to see “I Bet” than me. Busta trotted out his most famous dungeon-dragon runs (“Scenario,” “Look at Me Now”) and Timbaland DJ’d his own era-exploding hits but I’ve never seen cisgender double standards so grandly pronounced — they were shlubs doing high-priced karaoke by comparison (and skimpily at that; Busta gets away with not doing “Woo Hah!” or “Gimme Some More”). But Missy, whose eye-popping zaniness was sadly tempered on 2019’s non-comeback EP Iconology, actually brought her benchmark-setting videos to life, particularly “Get Ur Freak On.” The swirl of neon colors and costumes were a given, but also VMA-grade spaceships, lasers, and uncanny-valley AIs of her selves that actually work for someone this weird. “The Rain” was queued up with a “Singin’ in the Rain” that mutated into tap-dance dubstep. Movement galore. I’ve seen (very) latter-day George Clinton but I’m pretty sure this tour’s “Work It” came closer to the prime P-Funk spectacle as she sailed through the crowd in a plush fuchsia top hat. All that was missing was Ludacris.
2. Neil Young and Crazy Horse (5/12 Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, Camden, NJ)
As with many names on this one, especially as we get to the top, I had never before seen Uncle Neil. And once I caught a Rolling Stone review of the first night of the tour, and what was being performed (“Don’t Be Denied”!), I knew it was now or never. We didn’t get “Don’t Be Denied,” but just look at the trembling beauty of this thing. Look at it. He fucking opened with “Cortez.” “Fuckin’ Up.” “Powderfinger,” my god. “Roll Another Number (For the Road),” a personally huge valentine. I know he still does all these, but all in the same show? Every single song sounded fantastic, crackling with life and amp shmutz, imbued with a crowd-pleaser energy I was never quite taught that he had in him. And as with Bruce, I went to catch this 78-year-old at all while he was still with us and I’m probably going to have to return every last time he comes around. Definitely with the Horse. But maybe even without.
1. Madonna (1/25 Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA)
I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sure Beyoncé, Gaga, Sabrina, maybe even Kendrick will still be doing this at 65. We can assess those then. When I say “this,” I don’t mean belting from a stool while a tasteful backup ensemble eases the oeuvre into a riper age with acoustic demure shit. I mean full Dionysian dance-ensemble productions of “Into the Groove,” “Open Your Heart,” “Holiday” and regaling us with how she paid for her first guitar lesson with head in the first 30 minutes. “No one’s more surprised that I’m still here than me,” slurred cowboy-hatted Madge as she swug from a beer. She really is so fucking cute. One skit had a bouncer keeping her out of the club after not letting in her dancers. (“But I’m Madonna!” “I don’t care if you’re the Virgin Mary!”) She turned the stage into two boxing rings for “Erotica” while the fighters dry-fucked. She had her daughter on hand to play piano for “Bad Girl.” (Also: she played “Bad Girl.”) I almost sobbed when she brought out a purple-suited Prince imitator to send off “Like a Prayer.” Emboldened by the closing number, “Bitch, I’m Madonna,” a stranger ate one of my fries and wiped her hand on my pants, the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me. This was the greatest show I saw in 2024; that’s the low estimate. And at $160 it cost less than half what Olivia did.