Tuesday 28 April
Supports: Armor For Sleep, Tapestry
I lined up at The Brightside on Tuesday night with considerably less enthusiasm than usual. I’d just put in a long day at the office, a persistent drizzle was falling from the sky, and unfortunately the Hawthorne Heights show had been booked for the outdoor stage. However, there was an air of grim determination amongst the punters. We were going to celebrate 20 years of If Only You Were Lonely, come hell or high water.
For the last few years, Australian millennials have been spoiled with a seemingly endless run of ten and twenty year album anniversary tours. There have even been some fifteen year celebrations, from those eager to cash in on the elder emo goldmine. Who can blame them? Many of us have disposable income to spend on tickets and t-shirts, and we’re fully willing to overlook sore backs and knees to see our beloved high school bands.
Tickets were completely sold out, which is usually a promising sign for a good night. But as the venue filled, I noticed that other attendees seemed to be experiencing the same lack of enthusiasm that I was feeling. Even though lots of people had turned up early to secure a good spot, the limited options for shelter in the venue resulted in many hanging back from the stage, trying to keep out of the rain.
I ended up taking refuge near the bar to check out Aussie supporters Tapestry, who put on a valiant performance in challenging conditions. The opening set featured their latest effort, ‘Bedsheets’ along with some heavier tracks from their back catalogue. Overall it was a respectable display of post hardcore, met with a fairly muted response from the increasingly soggy crowd. “I didn’t think you guys were gonna show up early” vocalist Tom observed, getting a dispirited “wooooo” in response. He went on to mention that apparently people didn’t even come to the front of the stage for their other shows on this tour, so at least Brisbane cleared that particular low bar.
As Tapestry wrapped up, it became obvious that the rain wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. I enviously observed the covered balcony where the VIP ticket holders were being sheltered. The elevated stage layout in the venue was a bit weird – on one hand, it allowed everyone to easily see the band. On the other hand, it made me feel a bit like we were cattle in a holding pen. As eyeliner started to run and patrons started to shiver in their black hoodies, it was all making for a pretty depressing vibe.
Perhaps, I thought, this was the perfect atmosphere to welcome Armor For Sleep to the stage. After all, their most well known album What to Do When You Are Dead is essentially a concept record about suicide.
Miserable? Yes. Lethargic? Absolutely not. I can attest that Armor for Sleep are very much alive in 2026.
As they burst onto the stage with ‘Stay on the Ground,’ the mood immediately lifted. There’s something about American bands which is so earnest and heartfelt that you can’t help but get swept up in it. Clearly stoked to be in Australia, the whole band performed with boundless energy throughout their short set. Suspiciously youthful-looking frontman Ben Jorgenson seemed particularly animated, and more than happy to deliver all the crowd favourites. He introduced a number of tracks from What to Do When You Are Dead with a tongue in cheek “hey, here’s another song about being a ghost!”
It’s been a few years since I’ve listened to that record, and I was reminded of how bloody good it is. In fact, I would have been thrilled if they just performed the whole thing in full.
But for the sake of balance, new tune ‘Breathe Again’ and the more upbeat ‘Williamsburg’ both got a run, while old heads were treated to ‘Dream to Make Believe’ (the first song Ben ever wrote for the band when he was sixteen).
‘The Truth About Heaven’ then prompted an epic crowd singalong, which was immediately topped when they broke out the classic ‘Car Underwater’ to close out the first ever Armor for Sleep show in Brisbane. I located Ben in the merch tent later in the night and asked how the hell that was even possible. After all, Aussies love NJ emo, and it seems bizarre that the band never made it onto a single Soundwave lineup back in the day. He explained that they “just didn’t have the right people fighting in their corner” which is such a shame. Still, better late than never – here’s hoping it isn’t the last time we see them!
While waiting for the men of the hour to hit the stage, I saw someone with a nyan cat tattoo, and thought about how time is a great equaliser.
Hawthorne Heights were widely considered to be a bit cringe when If Only You Were Lonely first dropped. If you were in high school during 2006, you probably copped a good amount of shit if you listened to them. After all – they were a Victory Records band, an MTV band, a MySpace band. Their lyrics seemed specifically written to be used in an MSN or AIM away message, and they were roundly panned by many music critics. If you can believe it, after If Only You Were Lonely they went on to release another five albums, and never went on hiatus (like so many of their peers). But after Casey’s tragic death, they never reached the same level of commercial success again, and the scene moved on to neon and crabcore.
Cut to 2026, nobody seems to care about any of that anymore.
Rather than musical innovation or significance, the impact of bands like this can be seen in the shared subculture of an entire generation. And it’s our nostalgia for this subculture which has drawn us all here tonight. In other words – we all collectively remembered ‘This is Who We Are.’
Nobody cared if this album got a terrible review on AbsolutePunk (a website which is now long gone). Nobody cared that JT is still rocking a fringe and chunky black specs at 50 years old, looking like an aging version of that cheer up emo kid cartoon. They were always musically solid but lyrically wobbly, and nobody cared about that either. It’s all part of the legacy.
As a self-identified emo band, Hawthorne Heights were an accurate representation of the scene then, and still are to this day.
Yes, the scene in 2026 looks like AM//PM, emo nite, cruises, and old people clinging on to glory days that weren’t even that good to begin with. Yes, the lyrics were embarrassing in high school and have not improved with age. Yes, our subculture might be cringe, but it’s ours. It wasn’t cool in 2006 and it’s not cool in 2026, and that’s the point, god damn it. We aren’t trying to be cool now and we weren’t then – just trying to find a place we belong.
All the above is roughly what went through my mind as Hawthorne Heights performed If Only You Were Lonely. 45 minutes flew by, and before I knew it, JT interrupted my reverie with “thank you for the last twenty fucking years because that’s incredible.” The play through was complete, and he assured us that there would be no encore, just a couple of new songs and a couple of old songs. This seemed perfectly fair to me.
As he said “This song’s called ‘Dandelions’ I hope you like it,” the guy behind me whinged “I fucking hate this song” and I couldn’t help but laugh. Yeah, that song isn’t my favourite either, but they’d already played most of the hits and given the people what they wanted, right? As the night drew to a close, JT dubbed Australia the official second home of Hawthorne Heights, which is probably more than we deserve.
I was hanging back near the bar again, contemplating whether it was worth pushing through the crowd for a better view of the obligatory final track. At this point a lovely man grabbed my hand and pulled me up to the front. Shout out to that guy for allowing me to experience the iconic anthem ‘Ohio is for Lovers’ as it was intended.
That song perfectly encapsulates what I’m trying to explain about Hawthorne Heights – we don’t love it because it’s good. It isn’t beloved because it’s an artistic masterpiece.
It’s beloved because we listened to it on iPods when we were miserable teenagers, and we returned to it as adults on a random Tuesday to yell all the words in the rain together.
But… you know what? I think that makes it an artistic masterpiece after all.
Review by Beth Taylor
Photos by Reece Trudgen
