SHOWS // Haiku Hands @ Zebulon
Post by Misha
More pop shows ought to have mosh pits. There, I said it. That’s basically my whole take on this show, to be honest. When I got to the venue I was really tired. Maybe it’s the New York transplant energy, but the Zebulon crowd always feels a touch self-conscious. Not necessarily in a bad way, just, you know, everyone trying to figure out who to talk to next. There’s a lot of shuffling around in fur coats and squeaky clean Doc Martens. So I was pretty tired from a long day and the energy I was expending trying to look cool enough, and I was starting to question the wisdom of coming out on a Monday night to an 11 o’clock headliner.
Haiku Hands, though. There’s an arts and crafts punk rock quality to pop acts who don’t yet quite have the cash flow to put on the kind of big budget show they have in mind but somehow pull it off with some glitter glue and a few trips to the dollar store. It’s really something to watch. The band had headdresses made out of popsicle sticks. Choreographed dance numbers for every song. There might not have been a pyrotechnics budget, but there were party streamers thrown out over the crowd at the big drop.
This remarkable thing started to happen that sometimes happens at shows where the band is giving absolutely everything, which is that everyone started to lose it a little bit. Lose composure. Lose the weight in our steps and the space between one another. A gradual but certain descent into total chaos.
Then eventually (inevitably, really) the last song turned into a mosh and it was fkn awesome. Radio-ready beats pounding down from above, Haiku Hands rushing into the crowd, sharing the microphone, everyone jumping up and taking elbows on the way down, shoving, grinning like absolute maniacs, somehow no longer cool strangers on a Monday night. And it’s like, why do punk and hardcore shows have a monopoly on moshing? Punk and hardcore do not have a monopoly on going hard and really that’s all you need for a successful mosh pit.
IN CONCLUSION, the Haiku Hands show was great and more pop shows ought to have mosh pits.
Buy Haiku Hands’ music here.