It’s been a minute since I had to physically navigate around and over obstacles to get to a punk show. Packing two friends and two people I met moments earlier into my elder Rav 4, we cruised from South Philly to West Philly through a lengthy detour due to the recent and tragic collapse of a hospital parking garage (another sign of the times). This “ask a punk” generator gig was our destination. Its exact location was unclear due to the variety of flat, dry spots under or near the Grays Ferry bridge where a hundred punks could set up shop for a couple hours. We parked at a pavement-meets-gravel dead-end where a few other cars were spotted and walked along an unlit river path, turned around in doubt, met a couple other punks also in pursuit of the gig, circled back together, bypassed a large chainlink fence, hopped a smaller chainlink fence, and stumbled through a cliffside thicket, pursuing the steadily-growing murmur of idle punk behavior.

Our persistence was rewarded with Cleveland’s Yambag, who played shortly after what ended up being our perfectly-timed arrival. They play what I will accept as my favorite form of hardcore: blasting fast-core with grind and US ’82 influences. The singer’s bucket hat flew off within a couple songs and they absolutely flew through what must’ve been a lengthy selection of tunes, enough song titles to fill one of OFF!’s Dead Sea Scrolls-looking set-lists. Drummer Drew Vaccaro set his crash cymbals at a comical height ala Lucky Lehrer, and as I watched the right wrist of bassist Nick Kroh vibrating in place for twenty minutes straight, my own carpal tunnel symptoms started to flare up in empathy. As my friend pointed out, they were undeniably “tour tight”, and the crowd response was accordingly appreciative, full of unserious sideways speed-walking, fevered fist pumps, a small handful of firecrackers (which continue to follow Cleveland hardcore bands around since Nine Shocks Terror first cursed the city), and some of the weakest approximations of Ray Cappo’s iconic toe-touch jumps I’ve ever seen. It was glorious.

Reek Minds were next, and I want to take a moment to say that I love when bands have such a unified look that they could pass as siblings or cousins (or at least’d make sense crawling out of the same manhole). These shaved-head mooks look like they benchpress cinderblocks and eat collared-shirt wearers like me for breakfast, and they clearly knew they had the tunes we all wanted to hear: ugly thrashing power-violence mixed up in a scrum with Poison Idea and the X-Claim! discography. If the number of beer cans hurled at the performing band were counted as votes, Reek Minds easily won the evening, and they even upped the ante by introducing dirt and gravel as possible projectiles – the vocalist’s only real banter was a strained “give me… dirt!”, and he didn’t have to ask twice. Instead, he screamed so hard that the speakers would frequently overload and cut out, giving his voice the feel of a garbled trumpet – Gutalax, eat your heart out! While the portable PA and outdoor acoustics make for a less-than-desirable sound, Reek Minds sounded surprisingly full as the air turned chilly; even the drummer’s snare, somewhat lost in the wind for Yambag, cut through nice and sharp. When the apocalypse inevitably arrives, I want these guys on my side – after their music blows the windows out of a Cybertruck, the five of them could lift it and toss it in the river.

While listed first on the flyer, Early Grave grabbed the headlining spot, a practical move to keep their local friends in check (and make sure the out-of-towners had their fun, in the case of a bust). For as ramshackle as the show was, they were the first band to suffer any real sort of technical difficulties – at first the faltering microphone, and later the bass amp after two rowdy showgoers piggypack-rode directly into it. Those were only slight hiccups for this great new Philly trio, who harnessed the slimy menace of Crazy Spirit and Dawn Of Humans with their grotesque interpretation of hardcore-punk. The vocalist barked his vocals from under a tight black hoodie (a poise and stature redolent of Poison Ruïn’s Mac Kennedy), and they kept pace with the touring acts nicely. For whatever reason, it took a few songs to warm up what was an already-warmed-up crowd, but once things were in full swing they truly swung, with the widest, dustiest pit actions going off and surprisingly few bodies hitting the floor (mercifully so, as the ground’s craggy cement chunks and sewage run-off could cut your skin and infect it in one fluid motion). They sounded great, though as I watched Jim Shomo (of Dark Thoughts and Delco MFs) absolutely raging along in stationary position (when he wasn’t actively helping to fix the mic or bass), I couldn’t help but think that hardcore bands usually have stand-alone lead vocalists for good time-tested reason. Had Shomo grabbed the mic and took over for a few songs, I would’ve had no choice but to crawl up the bridge’s graffiti-covered pier by my fingernails and backflip down into the shadows. Instead, we made a hasty exit on the smooth side of the Superfund landfill this time, microplastics and silica dust shining our way along the dirt path like magic treasure.

I noticed a flyer on a telephone pole for a show while walking down the street from my house, so I decided to attend. What a refreshing sentence to type! I have no idea who was responsible for promoting this bill of local noise-ambient talent alongside exciting Chicago slow-core upstarts Cancer House, but they pulled out all the stops, with color posters printed and affixed to eye-level surfaces all around town. If there was an Instagram promotional campaign happening as well, my algorithm neglected to scoop it my way, but let’s hope that there wasn’t, and that the kids are once again relying on paper and staples to spread the word.

Taking place at the pestily-named & Space (that band “@” should play there), we strode up past the BDSM burlesque show on the warehouse’s second floor and into the third floor venue, nestled in a quaintly decaying corner of the Chinatown neighborhood. Greeted warmly at the door, the instructions were to remove our shoes and find a spot to sit on the sprung subfloor of what was an avant-garde dance studio by day. I confirmed that we had arrived a little too late to catch the opener JS, one of the evening’s many mysteries… if it turns out I missed a solo performance from John Sharkey, it will be my biggest regret of the season.

After snagging a spot on the floor behind a guy in an unraveling Comme des Garçons sweater (worn inside out so the tag was plain to see), LN Celestine met us at our level, crouched on the floor like a catcher as she powered up her circular arc of small electronics and effects pedals. Through live looping, Celestine built up a ragged battalion of drones, bowing her violin and singing wordless notes into a microphone in sparse iterations. For a crowd dressed almost exclusively in browns and blacks, this sort of Realtree hunting-cap ambient fit right in, summoned to life over the hiss-cracks of freshly-popped seltzers and beers in the audience. The Grouper aesthetic tells us that the end is near, that the technology we so desperately cling to will soon be dumped in the woods next to yesteryear’s tractor, rusted and mossed over, and it clearly resonates with this generation of art-minded young people who have only ever read about prosperity. LN Celestine offered a peaceful space for decay.

As LXV pulled his folding table over to the front of the room with the help of a friend, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Miller Lite company is aware of how many table-top noise sets it has fueled. This Philadelphia-based “sound arranger and independent researcher” had too much intertwined gear to carry piece by piece, and once situated, he began his set softly, can of Lite on hand. The crowd talked over it for at least a good five opening minutes, though as LXV offered no visual or overtly sonic signs of a performance taking place, it was excusable, maybe even desired by this field-recording-friendly artist. As the crowd quieted, he created an amorphous buzz of static and nocturnal thump with slow, unhurried changes. I was reminded of Fennesz’s Black Sea, were the filthy contaminants of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River flushed into those sparkling waters, though mostly LXV’s set captured the restless, inert sensation of when you’re trying to fall asleep on a plane but can’t. The performance probably went on a little too long for my tastes, eventually, slowly wrapping up in what felt like footage of a waterfall played in reverse at quarter-speed.

As I willingly forwent the empty Togo-style chair in the back of the room for a floor spot front-and-center, Chicago’s Cancer House situated themselves among their travel-sized amps and pared-down trap kit, the band only half-honoring the venue’s no-shoes policy. This quintet are copacetic with the not-yet-codified crop of younger artists who are finding novel ways to fuse aspects of emo, drone, noise, folk, electronics and shoegaze into something identifiable as new, a penchant reflected even just locally by groups like They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, Scena, Her New Knife (a personal fave) and Chemical. Cancer House’s songs this evening were elegiac and pointed – the mix of expansively forlorn guitars and in-the-pocket slow-core drumming was decidedly Earth-like (circa Hex and The Bees Made Honey), though the softly vulnerable vocals, risky guitar phrasing, technical flubs and sensitive delivery recalled the more esoteric end of ’90s emo ala I Hate Myself, Still Life and Don Martin Three. I didn’t realize I wanted or needed the concept of an emo Earth, but Cancer House made it irresistible – I even found myself on board for the sole screamo breakdown of the set, multiple vocalists doubled-over screaming (with or without microphone assistance) in the manner of Saetia and Jeromes Dream. Bassist/vocalist Lily Sharratt’s voice added a calming presence, with the same wide-eyed, unintelligible delivery as Bilinda Butcher, like a deer in the headlights who knows something you don’t and centered far more live than on their album The Moth. I’m not sure Butcher ever scrolled through the lyrics on her iPhone with her big toe while playing, though. All in all, a captivating performance, and I hope our discouraging world offers them enough time and resources to see where it might take them.