LIVE REVIEW: lobsterfight, Your Arms Are My Cocoon and Hey, ily at the Play Circle

by Camila Trimberger

The morning after seeing lobsterfight, Your Arms Are My Cocoon, and Hey, ily I couldn’t move, mostly from still processing the Weezer covers, mosh pits and vomit but also because I’m pretty sure I threw out my back from dancing.

I had been hyped for this show since it was first announced. Despite having gone to at least ten different shows since the semester began, I hadn’t seen any live emo music since November 2019 when I saw Remo Drive the day after having a back surgery (and having my stitches come out in the pit).

I arrived at the Play Circle, a small room, somewhat empty in Memorial Union about 15 minutes before the show was set to start. Before it started we were told not to cross a pink tape barrier around the stage for COVID-19 safety, a move that made me and my friends concerned that the next two hours of our lives were going to be very awkward.

When the first act, lobsterfight came on, all 40-ish crowd members sheepishly moved up to the pink semi-circle to listen. I’m not sure if this was their first out of state show (as was the case with the other two acts) but the Colorado duo seemed a little nervous, especially as the crowd grew in size. The group was assisted by Hey, ily frontman, Caleb, on bass. Caleb was definitely more used to performing on stage and continuously encouraged the audience to clap, jump and dance. By the end of their half-hour set, everyone was dancing and moshing around the semicircle to the keyboard beats.

Your Arms Are My Cocoon was next. I had listened to this project in the days leading up to the show but I was surprised to see just a small boy named Tyler in a too-big turtleneck walk up on stage. It was so quiet as he took a sip from his water bottle-- which was also too big for him-- but this made his screams even louder when he began his first song. His emotion isn’t fully captured in recordings which made me extremely appreciative of the fact that I was able to see his first live performance. Under my mask, my jaw was dropped for the duration of the set. During the last song, Tyler dropped his guitar, put on his mask and went straight into the crowd, leaving no person un-moshed. It was by now that I noticed that the crowd size had nearly doubled, and the left side of the room had formed a small but valiant pit.

A random man from the audience summed up the set fairly well, “That was raw as fuck!”

Finally, Hey, ily was up. They started off as strongly as I expected them to. I kept on the right side of the room, away from the pit and moshed by myself the whole time. This felt really cool and sexy until all of my friends showed me videos after the show of me looking stupid as I headbanged while holding my glasses. Regardless, the energy brought by Hey, ily was exactly what I wanted from my first emo show in years. A few songs in, they covered “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” by My Chemical Romance and I lost my mind (and my voice).

Later during a talk break, their keyboardist, Skyy, asked for paper towels which I think the audience ignored until the drummer, Conner, announced that he was “covered in throw up” (he was). All of the band except for Caleb and the guitarist, Trevin, left to go help with the clean up.

While this event should have put a premature end to the set, the band was determined and filled the rest of their slot with getting help from other drummers in the crowd and doing acoustic versions of fan-suggested emo songs. I was blessed enough to hear another My Chem cover, this time an acoustic version of “I Don’t Love You.” Later our albums editor, Arthur Machado, yelled out for a Weezer song, and to my dismay they then played “El Scorcho.”

The majority of the set ended up being this live-emo-top-hits-playlist but my friends, the rest of the crowd, and I never stopped having fun. Caleb’s shoes were off as he danced on stage and the drummer eventually emerged in a new set of clothes to join the crowd and cheer them on.

The drummer of Hotel Wifi-- who had driven from Montana with the band-- joined for the last few songs of the set to fill in, and by the end Caleb, out of breath and smiling, announced a band name for the three of them, “we are Bus Riders!”