almost monday Live at The Teragram Ballroom

For the first time since the pandemic began, I didn’t show up to a concert wondering if this would be the time that I might recognize another attendee in the crowd, worrying about being by myself in a room full of people grouped together in twos and threes. Instead, from the moment I met up with Unpublished’s editor-in-chief Rebecca and two other music writers Sam and Doris and stood in the line that was snaking around the venue and down the street, I knew Joywave’s March 16th concert was going to be a night unlike any other.

People were actually waiting for me to show up. They wanted to talk to me, didn’t leave me looking around feeling a little out of place, and shared a plate of chicken tenders and fries with me before the show. Before Joywave came onstage, they encouraged me to push through the crowd and stand with them so close to the stage that I could see the sweat dripping off of everyone’s faces onstage. The girls even waited twenty minutes for my mom to pick me up at the end of the night. It might sound sad seeing how excited I am to be sharing such commonplace interactions, how happy I was even before the concert began, but while I often enjoy going out alone, sometimes there really is nothing like meeting up with people who want you to be there.

Given how welcomed and warm I felt, I was primed to enjoy the opening set before Joywave’s main appearance, almost monday. Like most of the acts I go out to see, I’d never heard of the band and it seemed I wasn’t alone in that. But whether it was the overall good vibes in the room or the infectious energy of the lead singer Dawson Daugherty, I instantly fell in love with their sound from their first song.

It was hard to believe it was their first-ever tour. While at times it felt like the other band members Luke Fabry and Cole Clisby could’ve revealed a little bit more of their personality and not remained so stiff, Daugherty held his own and truly owned that stage. Dancing wildly, throwing back his head with his flop of blonde curls, keeping it personal and intimate even with his trademark sunglasses.

Both singing and talking, he carried himself with an easy, natural ease that made his jokes land with an equally lighthearted audience, including when he labeled almost monday as a “mediocre Joywave cover band.” It would’ve felt silly in any other context but during a performance of their chillwave music that invited dance and playfulness, it worked.

With deep, thick bass lines and synths hinting at a past time, there really is no other way to describe their music other than groovy and funky, carefully designed to make us dance around the room. When they played “sunburn,” one of their unreleased songs, suddenly everything felt like summertime, like a two-month-long break from school. Like anything was possible and everything about life felt free. In all of their songs but especially in “sunburn,” that child-like play and adult nostalgia combined to make a joyful, if bittersweet, celebration of what we’d left behind.

And of course, there’s nothing quite like audience interaction while performing a song and almost monday didn’t disappoint that night. In their second to last song “cough drops,” also unreleased, Daughterty asked the audience to sing its recurring bass line in the chorus. “Is that the vibe?” he said, surprisingly shy given how shameless and unafraid he’d been in his dancing just a song before. I practically pictured the pleading emoji in my head.

But to all of our relief, including Daugherty’s, I’m sure, the whole audience joined in to sing along to the bass line, staying faithful even to the end. I enjoyed how different this moment felt from the others, given its heavier rock sound. Yet it made me want to let loose on the concert floor just the same as the others. I didn’t know yet just how fearless I would become over the next few hours, from pushing past at least five rows of people to reach the very end of the stage, to engaging in an exchange with a stranger next to me. Maybe I was strengthened by the people I’d come to the concert with, or almost monday’s incredible music, or maybe it was me.

Whatever the reason, as the band was reaching the end of their set, I closed my eyes, swayed my hips, and let the rhythm move me, glad, for the first time in a long time, that I was finally feeling free.