Paying tribute to their beloved tour mates and tonight’s headliners, Wil Wagner says “they’re a great band, but they’re nice, which is more important”.
It’s as good an introduction as any to Californian punk veterans Lagwagon, whose enduring appeal lies largely in their ordinariness, humility, and approachability, as much as their ability to knock out high-speed pop-punk gems at will.
But first, Wagner’s group, The Smith Street Band, play a typically vital set. First up is an urgent ‘Sunshine And Technology’, one of the many spirited folk-punk salvos from their outstanding record of the same name.
There’s a real honesty to their songs, a sense that they are written from experience, their insights hard won.
His round face drenched with sweat and straining from effort, Wagner rails against apathy and mediocrity, never better than in ‘I Want Friends’ (“I see people that I love melting into mortgages/and it’s all so fucking meaningless”).
Other highlights of a typically compelling set are ‘Sigourney Weaver’ and the impassioned ‘Young Drunk’, which brings to mind the freewheeling wasted charm of the early Replacements records.
At various times, they’ve described themselves as a “shitty band from Melbourne” and “just five idiots having fun”. Don’t believe them. They’re actually one of the best bands in the country.
After such a stellar support act, it almost feels like time to leave, but nobody is going anywhere when Lagwagon rip into ‘Violins’, a classic cut from the cherished 1995 album Hoss.
There’s plenty more old classics to take everyone back to their teenage punk years, with old favourites like the start-stop ‘Weak’ getting people moving and crowd surfers being hoisted toward the front.
Then there’s the speed and melodic attack of ‘Confession’ and the tuneful ode to vices, ‘Coffee and Cigarettes’, with Cape admitting to have recently returned to one of these old habits.
Having released an EP called I Think My Older Brother Used to Listen to Lagwagon, it’s perhaps no surprise they’ve embraced their role as elder statesman and are happy for their shows to be nostalgia fests for those whose teen years they soundtracked. Tellingly, nothing from that 2008 EP makes it onto the set list tonight.
‘May 16’ gets a run late in the set, before the group make the most low key of exits (“We’re going be go have a piss and come back in five or ten minutes”).
Cape then returns to stage on his own, armed with an acoustic guitar and leads the crowd in an emotional sing-along cover of No Use For A Name’s evergreen ‘International You Day’; dedicated to Tony Sly, his friend and collaborator, who passed away earlier this year.
The full band re-assemble for a cathartic run at the beloved ‘Alien 8’ and a raucous, adrenaline-fuelled cover of ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, a song only a grouch could dislike.
Lifted from 1994’s ‘Trashed’, it can now be seen as something of a forerunner to the tongue in cheek approach of one of Cape’s other bands, the legendary punk cover supergroup Me First And The Gimme Gimmes
Finally ‘Razor Burn’, which features perhaps the greatest lyrical couplet in all of pop punk: “On the night she left me, facial hair grew miraculously / I dressed in black like Johnny Cash and grew this beard of shame”.
The crowd yell in unison, pumping fists, colliding with the sweaty bodies of fellow fans, finally and righteously worn out by this trip down pop punk’s memory lane.
They seem genuinely grateful for the loyalty and continued support of their fans whose devotion has kept them from ever having to grow up and embrace some die-hards down the front as they make for the exits.
Nice guys sure, but they’ve got the great band thing covered too.
Check out the photo gallery of Lagwagon playing Manning Bar here.
