Letlive. Live in Huntington, New York

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After seeing letlive. open for The Wonder Years’ recent headlining tour, I think it’s fair to say they’re the world’s most energetic live band. A lot has been written over the years about letlive.’s chaotic set, with Dan Campbell himself praising the ferocity upon the stage:

Watching letlive. play is like what it felt like to see American Nightmare in 2001 in a middle school cafeteria. Watching letlive. is what I feel like it should have been like to see Refused in 1999 had they been revered as they should have been. Watching letlive. reignites my love for playing. They put on literally the greatest live show I’ve seen and yes, I’m using literally the way that literally is literally meant to be used.
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Calling the band’s set chaotic though does not do Jason Aalon Butler’s self-destructive onstage persona enough justice. The band’s sets are pretty much 45 minutes of a man endangering his own well-being in search of punk rock salvation. Whether it is pouring a full-beer can, a cup of tea, or a full bottle of water over his head (all of which happened over the two nights) even despite the risks of electrocution, scaling and hanging dangerously over a balcony, as he did in Pennsylvania, or traversing the length of the balcony, including a 10 foot drop to the floor, as he did in New York, it genuinely seems like at no point during the band’s set is Butler completely safe.

But it is also certainly that sense of masochism which makes letlive. sets so thrilling to witness. Not many acts I can think of are willing to take those risks, are willing to go the extra mile in search of the “performance.” And even the few that do don’t have the sense of unconscious showmanship that Butler seems to possess. Even when he doesn’t seem to be “playing to the crowd” in a sense, he has this air about him that makes you unable to take your eyes off him the entire time they’re on stage. Campbell put it succinctly later in the night when he was thanking all the bands during The Wonder Years set, saying something to the effect of, “It’s an honor to come on stage night after letlive., but how do you even begin to top that.”

As the band is gearing up to release a new full-length on June 10th, they played a setlist that was a near even split of songs from each of their two most recent albums. In Pennsylvania, they even played a version of “The Dope Beat” that was never officially released outside of Youtube. The alternate version features guest vocals in the bridge from Campbell, who came out on stage to an uproarious reaction. It was of course the first of two collaborations on stage that night between the two artists, as I covered previously in my recaps of these shows. But it was the new song letlive played, “Good Mourning, America,” that set the crowd off most visibly. The shout-along chorus and huge wall of sound proved really fitting for a live atmosphere. An intrepid crowd-surfer who seemingly had already learned the words from the live YouTube videos made it all the way to the stage, where they were greeted with a warm embrace from Butler. That moment truly encapsulated letlive.’s set in many ways; it seemed their blistering performance was a love letter to fans, new and old.


Photo by Craig Ismaili

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