Smack in the middle of a week-long heatwave, Safe Mind were set to make their second Philadelphia appearance in support of their debut album, Cutting The Stone. Their single “6′ Pole” was my favorite tune of 2024 (if I haven’t mentioned that enough times already), so I had no choice but to venture up to the second floor of Johnny Brenda’s, easily the most revered of Fishtown venues (neither too revoltingly corporate nor falling-apart dumpy). It’s unsettling to reflect upon any significant passage of time, but I have been patronizing JB’s for over twenty years. My personal shoestring fry-count must run into the tens of thousands.

Opening the merciful two-band Tuesday-night bill was Chemical, a newly-homegrown act of whom little was publicized. Of all the contemporary band-naming conventions, I think I prefer the ungoogleable-due-to-ubiquity route to quirky misspellings or stylized alternate text. No need to be Chemi_kul, or ¢hm¢l, you know? “Chemical” is so droll and commonplace as to be functionally useless, like calling yourself Band. I appreciated it in the mid ’90s when the UK duo Chemical released their sole LP of hazy psych, and I appreciate it with this new group now.

Chemical’s bio on the Johnny Brenda’s site was, in its entirety, “devotional philadelphia insurgence group [sic]”, almost as meaningless as the band name, though it ensured that the few people who actually read opening-band descriptions on the club’s ticketing page could expect an aloof mystique. As Chemical took the stage, this traditional guitar / bass / drums rock trio looked like college dropouts who hang out at Graffiti Pier after dark, bearing none of the paramilitary monk style relayed in their bio. I keep forgetting that cruddy late ’90s fashion is once again in full effect with the youth, as the guitarist’s sleeveless white undershirt and extra-length jorts resembled the style of someone I would’ve been close buds with in eighth grade. There must be a German word for the combined emotion of endearment and unease brought about by the cycling of trends.

Ready to accept whatever style of music this intriguing group had to offer, I found myself pulled into their vibe right off the bat. Theirs is an arty and morose post-grunge style, and alongside their stern on-stage presentation, I’m guessing that they’re fans of the Julia’s War label and its roster’s opaque, left-field interpretations of today’s prevailing shoegaze / dream-pop trends. Their opening tune bore the subdued threat of violence I hear in Her New Knife; both groups seem to reinterpret Sonic Youth’s moody discordance with an added blackened sense of doom. I would’ve been content with variations on that basic template, but Chemical clearly had a number of musical ideas at work, the guitarist chopping it up Gang Of Four style, shimmering like Billy Corgan in a silver tuxedo and meekly picking at chorus-washed strings like some petrified ’90s goth, sometimes all in the same song, his feet (white athletic socks with velcro Teva sandals) tapping at a finicky chain of pedals. He brought three guitars on stage and admirably used them all in their brief opening set. For as much as I admired his style, the drummer was noticeably cool too, tall and Ramones-y and hunched over in dark sunglasses, though the bassist (also in dark sunglasses) may have been my favorite of the three, confidently delivering her own unusual bass-lines that didn’t replicate the guitar’s melodies so much as dance around them. There was one song in particular where her bass-line was so busy that it seemed to loop beyond the 4/4 timing of the song; I hope to hear it again on their debut EP. They had CDs for sale ahead of the official Bandcamp release date, which in true Y2K-throwback fashion were packaged in clear jewel cases with the name stamped on the CD, ready to be tossed on the passenger-side floor of your boyfriend’s Honda Civic next to back issues of Transworld SKATEboarding and the remnants of last night’s Taco Bell. I’m gonna go pull up the Bandcamp now!

Johnny Brenda’s layout is defined by its bottleneck – this can result in varying pockets of crowd density, though both floors were starting to fill up before Safe Mind took the stage. Gus Muller found an extremely charismatic vocalist in Jae Matthews, storming the world’s dance-floors with sultry, after-hours minimal-wave as Boy Harsher. It would seem he landed an equally enthralling vocalist in Cooper B. Handy, the wage-worker-turned-GQ-profiled-outsider-hunk, for their Safe Mind project. Handy’s solo music (confusingly under his own name as well as the moniker “Lucy”) is preposterous and cool, flipping the stink one might anticipate from say, a trap beat thrown over the Titanic soundtrack into something substantial, catchy, and desirable (that’d be “Rhododendron”). His elusive pop-star quality is given ample room to play with Safe Mind, as Muller’s beats and melodies for this project are bright and upbeat, no sign of the dark-velvet-n’-chains goth that defines the Boy Harsher experience.

Wandering on-stage in their windbreakers as if it wasn’t sweltering outside, Handy grabbed his guitar as Muller settled behind two full-size, right-angled tables of synths and electronics. The contrast between their musical resumes was on full display, what with Handy’s meager Peavey combo amp dwarfed by Muller’s cutting-edge synthesizers and hardware devices, the sort of synth-wave buffet one can amass through Boy Harsher-sized paydays (or, if you can find one, a wealthy deceased grandparent). From there they jumped into the entirety of Cutting The Stone with all the excitement of a fresh new band that only has one album to pull songs from. Leaning on their patented 75% New Order / 25% Paula Abdul formula, songs that sounded sleepier on record (“Standing On Air”, “Life In A Jar”) bounced with energy into the eager, supportive crowd. When Handy wasn’t playing guitar, he bopped in place with simplistic and repetitive b-boy moves in his now-signature bandana, not unlike a six year-old recreating a Bell Biv Devoe music video from memory (and nearly as cute). The charm of this confident duo shined throughout, though most clearly when busting out “6′ Pole” second in the set list. They closed their performance with “Autonomy”, the Boy Harsher song that features Handy on vocals (and logged over two million views on YouTube). The crowd cheered as the opening arpeggio hit, one last dance before wandering back into the oppressive, stagnant air outside.