Halfway through their set at the 9:30 Club on Tuesday, FIDLAR frontman Zac Carper told the boys in the crowd to move to the sides and make room for a girls-only mosh pit, positioned right in front of center stage.
This moment solidified the progressive-punk vibes of the whole concert. The all-girl grunge rock band NOBRO opened up the night with an aggressive and instrumentally creative set, followed by the female-fronted group Dilly Dally, whose set shrouded the venue with a melancholic yet angry feel.
As soon as FIDLAR played their first chord, the crowd started moshing and screaming along, which felt like a cathartic reaction to the loud, angsty set. Despite the violent passion amongst the concertgoers, there was a sense of family — when shoes got lost in the pit, strangers rallied together to find them; when smaller folks got shoved to the ground, surrounding moshers rushed to lift them up before they could get stomped on.
Oftentimes, a sense of fandom overcomes pop-punk concerts as stans try to co-opt barricade crowd placements and focus more on taking video than rocking out, which can detract from the anger of it all. But that was absent at the FIDLAR show — the majority of the crowd was one big pit, and those who stayed passive stood towards the back or on the upper balcony.
FIDLAR definitely matched the excitement of their audience. They performed with the vigor and energy of high school boys hopped up on Monster Energy drinks, but their melodies weren’t lost in the noisy hype. They extended some of their songs, performed a few unreleased tracks and connected it all with very few breaks.
Their openers didn’t have that same musical control. Despite NOBRO having some unique musical elements — such as maracas and bongo drums — that added depth to their sound, the lead singer was hard to listen to. Dilly Dally’s set grew boring because all of their songs started to sound the same.
But by the end of FIDLAR’s set, everyone was dripping sweat and Carper noticed the night was starting to wear on the adoring fans. So, he forced the audience to calm down before entering their final song of the evening. He had the crowd take a step back and split down the middle, ordering each side to sit down right on the 9:30 Club floor. As the band played the unmistakable intro to “Cocaine” over and over, Carper said we would know when to hop back up.
As soon as he screamed the song’s first lyrics, the crowd rose up and united with the same pushes and punches from before, moshing as one big family yet again.
3.5/4 Shells.
