Live Review: Alkaline Trio @ Paradise Rock Club, 8/11/11

Halfway through the set, when Matt Skiba changed his electric guitar for an acoustic, the singer-songwriter for the band Alkaline Trio proclaimed he was in love. "I met the most amazing woman!" he yells, and then dedicates "Clavicle" to said woman. It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

Err... let's try that again.

Through all my years of enjoying traditional pop-punk bands, it's almost startling to reveal that I have never seen Chicago's famed Alkaline Trio. Singer-guitarist Matt Skiba has had my attention since the Asian Man Records days and the track "Goodbye Forever," and it seemed that they just didn't come to the area much. For the third or fourth time this year, I reverted to a high-school freshmen part of myself that I didn't know still existed.

This was truly a show for the band's longtime fans, as the room screamed with delight to Skiba's strumming the chords of Godammit! opener "Cringe." Many songs played were from the early part of their career, when Skiba's lyrics which much more playful ("Mr. Chainsaw," "Nose Over Tail" and "Old English 800.") Bassist and singer Dan Adriano got to showoff his excellent songwriting skills with "In Vein" and (arguably my favorite Alk3 song0 "Blue Carolina." Skiba and Adriano perfectly play their often-dramatic songs with the same passion and theatrics put into them. With this year marking the band's 15 year anniversary, here's hope that the guys have it in them to put out another album.

Setlist:

Cringe/In Vein/Private Eye/Nose Over Tail/Goodbye Forever/I Lied My Face Off/Old School Reasons/Mr. Chainsaw/Maybe I'll Catch Fire/Blue Carolina/Mercy Me/San Francisco/This Could Be Love/If You Had A Bad Time/Clavicle/You've Got So Far To Go/Blue In The Face/Old English 800/Radio

Encore: My Friend Peter/Crawl/'97