Bowling For Soup: An Acoustic Evening with Jared and Erik, The Academy, April 6th 2011
Review by Oisin Tormey
I really didn’t know how this one was going to work. Bowling for Soup, a band usually associated with high-tempo, pop-punk tune-age stripping it all down to two acoustic guitars and a keyboard in the corner. The crowd was relatively young too, and it did cross my mind that this could backfire on the band with the expectation of a full performance in a more familiar way. Instead they lapped up every minute of it, turning the atmosphere from a concert into more like a party where your two funny friends begin to play guitar for everyone. This isn’t putting down their performance in any way, the guys on stage were hilarious, with as much musical as there was comedy value in the night overall.
The gig itself was very fan orientated, with a VIP meet-up (for fans that paid a little extra for tickets) before hand and the band readily accepting requests if someone shouted up to them. The banter between the crowd and the band was for the most part one of the best things about the night, although the guys did seem to get a little bit annoyed after a while with the crowd resembling an unruly classroom for some parts of their show. Paper planes with messages on them flew up onto the stage and the band read them out, to their credit, and picked up a well-made banner which a fan made. The unfortunate part (for him) was that it was spelt “Bowling for Soup”, one of the many comedic parts of the night.
To only focus on the comedic aspect of their performance would be unfair, the guys put on a great show musically too. One thing you wouldn’t usually associate with a band like BFS are harmonies, but in the acoustic setting, their combined singing was surprisingly better than anyone could’ve expected. Erik and Jared combine really well on their songs, but due to the louder performances, this is maybe not as apparent as it was at this gig. They are so in sync too that they can just both stop during a song, have a discussion for a few minutes, and carry on as they were without any major problems. The guitar playing, which for some bands when playing acoustic can be a little lacklustre, wasn’t any trouble for the guys, with Erik performing a nice solo during ‘Friends O’ Mine’. The gig was also used to preview some songs which will be on their upcoming album, due to be released in May. First of many was ‘What About Us’, an underwhelming, cliché-ridden sob song which fell flat among the crowd hoping to hear some more up-tempo tracks like the one it followed in the setlist for the night, ‘I’m Gay’.
Erik takes over the vocals for the second of the new tracks ‘Guard My Heart’, another quiet number, but one which is much better than ‘What About Us’ was before it. The band then goes back to tried and tested territory and play ‘High School Never Ends’, which gets the crowd singing along and bouncing around again. The band bring on support acts Linus of Hollywood and Ryan Hamilton from ‘People on Vacation’ to sing during different parts of the show (self-confessed “pee-breaks” for the BFS guys), with Linus helping out on another new track, ‘Turbulence’. This for me was the best of the slow songs from the new album, and despite no one hearing it before, the crowd really enjoys it and hand wave through it. Ryan helps out with a great rendition of ‘Listen to Her Heart’ by Tom Petty, leaving some younger members of the crowd asking each other is it another song off the album since it was performed so well. The funniest part of the night occurs when Erik goes for his pee-break, leaving Linus of Hollywood and Jared to sing their own unique version of ‘Every Rose Has It’s Thorn’ by Poison. The song lasts close to ten minutes, with the guys on stage interrupting the song throughout, commenting on everything from the hilarity in Bret Michaels’ voice, to how the guitar-made drumbeat at the end of the song sounds like a small fart that you’ve been trying to hold in for a while.
Linus leaves the stage, leaving the duo time to perform a trio of BFS fan favourites; ‘Punk Rock 101’, ‘My Wena’, the phallic love song, and ‘The Bitch Song’. We then get a discussion on the merits of the word ‘la’, and the discussion on is it actually a word, followed by Erik’s Bill Cosby impression which left me in tears laughing. Another new song with an intro resembling the start to Bell X1’s ‘Alphabet Soup’ is next, and is a return to the more popular styles of the band, as opposed to the more acoustic-orientated tracks off the upcoming album. The band finishes off the set with ‘1985’ which has the crowd singing as loud as they can. Jaret breaks his kazoo cherry, as he puts it, by closing the song with a funny solo. This is the best thing about the band tonight; they never take themselves too seriously, which leaves the entire crowd in a joyful mood as they leave the stage. They inevitably return to the stage after “one more tune” chants resonate around The Academy.
Last song of the night is ‘Really Cool Dance Song’, a lampoon of how fickle the music business can be. Jared and Erik both break out in fits of laughter during the song, but this only adds to the giddy schoolchild mood which is throughout the venue. It may not be Mozart, but Jared and Erik really know how to entertain. Despite all my concerns about how the duo would be able to strip down their songs, the old ones were great to hear in a new way, the new material was hit-and-miss but enjoyable, and the comedy value made me glad I had the chance to see them live, and will gladly do so again.