by Sunday Valentine
On Friday March 1st, Current Joys played at Noise Pop in San Francisco at the Great American Music Hall. Current Joys is an indie rock band by the singer Nicholas Rattigan, who is also part of Surf Curse. At the show, Jackson Katz played drums, while Aaron Jassenoff was on bass. Both of whom are part of the band Slow Hollows. Maddy Boyd played the synth.
When the first notes started to play, I could feel the vibrations pass through my body along with a second feeling under my feet. It was the rumbling of dancing and jumping, as a young energetic crowd began moving like waves. A couple songs later, “New Flesh” comes on and the crowd recognizes it instantly by the first riff — they get excited and cheer. Loads of people were singing along with Nicholas. “I listened to the cure. I listened to the cure. I listened to the cure. And then I cried”.
One of my favorite moments came when during the song, a brave soul got on stage and danced confidently for a while next to the band, before jumping back into the crowd. Other people also got on stage to crowd surf the waves. Some crowd members danced while holding dolls of babies in the air. An oddity to see.
Along with playing “Kids” and “Different Age”, Current Joys played a few new songs. The singer jokingly told the crowd that people don’t like new songs, because they are “boring,” since you don’t know the lyrics and can’t sing along. Then he said, “well I’m going to teach you the lyrics so you can’t be bored”.
At the end, the crowd cheered for an encore, but the singer said he didn’t like encores. Still, he played one more song. A new song. It was him at a piano singing a song that might, or might not, be called “Voyager”. Nicholas mentioned that he was barely learning the piano, but the crowd gave him a reassuring cheer. It was an emotional stripped down song and a good way to end a great show.
Memorable Moments: One of Nicholas Rattigan’s guitar strings broke during the show, Nicholas posted on instagram “going to wear this bandana on stage” to which he did but it fell off when he was guitar dancing, they took a song request, someone gave them flowers and they put them on the drumset.
