Two Arenas, One Weekend, Zero Regrets
Twelve hours of driving. Six hours of live music. Two arenas, two nights, one very tired set of ears. This week Mark recaps a whirlwind Detroit doubleheader that proved you’re never too old to act like you’re still in your thirties, followed by four new tracks pulled from the depths of “the Holding Pen” during what he calls one of the roughest weeks for new music all season.
The weekend kicked off Friday night with Rush at Little Caesars Arena, a show Mark genuinely didn’t think would happen after Neil Peart’s passing. He and a buddy from Rock and Roll Autopsy scored face-value tickets and made the trip up from Ohio, and what they got was, by Mark’s account, the best the band has sounded in the twenty-plus years he’s been following them since the Vapor Trails tour. Geddy Lee’s voice held up all night, Alex Lifeson’s playing showed no sign of the arthritis that’s dogged him in recent years, and new drummer Anika Nilles turned in a performance Mark can only describe as unreal, breaking a stick mid-song without missing a beat and bringing a different feel to Peart’s parts without trying to be a copy of them. It’s the kind of show that makes a three-hour drive feel like nothing.
Saturday brought a hard reset: pack up, grab his wife and oldest daughter, and head right back to Detroit, this time for Ed Sheeran’s LOOP tour at Ford Field. Mark isn’t a die-hard Sheeran fan, that title belongs to his wife and daughter, but he came away impressed watching one guy hold a full football stadium for close to three hours using nothing but a loop pedal and a genuine sense of showmanship. The seats came with a side of audio archaeology this time. Stuck two rows from a concrete back wall, Mark spent part of the show diagnosing why the low end kept phasing out during Sheeran’s percussive looped rhythms, a problem solved only by the earplugs he, his wife, and his daughter all had the sense to bring. Two back-to-back arena shows in two nights isn’t something Mark pulls off often anymore, but he proved to himself he still can, even if it meant a hard nap afterward and a much slower week getting the episode together.
That slower week showed up in the music, too. Mark didn’t sugarcoat it: this was a genuinely difficult week to find songs worth sharing, rough enough that he had to raid the Holding Pen, his personal purgatory playlist for songs that might grow on him before getting cleared out every couple of months. What he pulled out still delivers.
The Songs
First up is “Get Down” by Isaiah Stone, a track Mark stumbled onto through an Instagram ad rather than any usual discovery channel. It plays like Prince and Lenny Kravitz split custody of a rhythm section, funky bass and drums under gritty, lived-in vocals. Stone’s socials are blank and there are no tour dates listed anywhere, which has Mark a little worried he’s found a musical dead end, but the song earns its spot regardless.
Porcelain’s “Apocalypse” comes next, a grungy post-hardcore cut off the Austin band’s upcoming album. Mark hears a straight line back to the Seattle scene here: vocals riding the edge of breaking, thick sludgy guitar, and a droning, repetitive riff that locks in and doesn’t let go. It’s on the heavier end of what the show usually covers, and Mark’s fine letting that be the point.
Saint Clair returns for a second appearance this season with “Something to be Said,” following up their earlier pick “Gretchen.” Mark leans into the early Radiohead comparison again, this time with a more up-tempo, heavier arrangement built on strong dynamic control. What gets him is the vocal delivery, specifically a small, intentional flourish the singer weaves between notes that isn’t quite vibrato but does something similarly unsettling and cool.
Closing things out is “Always” from The Crooks, a band Mark has been tracking since their Season 2 appearance with “In The Meantime” back on Episode 54. He doesn’t hear an obvious influence driving their sound, just accessible, well-built rock delivered with the kind of confidence that’s increasingly rare. In a landscape short on straightforward rock songs that just work, Mark’s glad a band like this is still making them.
