Minus The Bear Fall Headline Tour featuring Cursive – TOUR REVIEW

On an awesome Friday night, we made the trip out to The Rave in Milwaukee to see Minus The Bear’s fall headline tour with Cursive and Caspian! You can check out our review of the night’s events after the break.

Minus The Bear Fall Headline Tour featuring Cursive – TOUR REVIEW

On an awesome Friday night, we made the trip out to The Rave in Milwaukee to see Minus The Bear’s fall headline tour with Cursive and Caspian! You can check out our review of the night’s events after the break.

It’s Friday night and the only place to be in Milwaukee other than pizza shuttle is The Rave. Caspian graced the stage of the Rave that night and absolutely blew the crowd away. The only unfortunate part of their set was the fact that more people didn’t show up early enough to witness the 30 minutes of sheer mind blowing post rock. The best thing about the rave was the fact that they had the capacity to put on a light show that rivaled the awesomeness of Caspian’s huge sound. Honestly, Caspian totally took me by surprise and has become one of my favorite post rock bands to date. Their choral overtures and intense low ends definitely dropped the jaws of all who were in attendance. Caspian in my opinion should have headlined the show, because they stood out by leaps and bounds from both other acts.

A blast from the not so far past, Cursive bridged the gap between the epic Caspian and the pedal based Minus The Bear. I had heard tons and tons of information about Cursive ever since I first got into music about a decade ago. Despite all the hype, I never actually got around to listening to them. Well tonight was the night and at first, well I was caught off guard. Their style was: awkward, angsty, emo punk, I could be wrong from what their actual genre is specified as but, that’s how it came off to me. They definitely seemed to be tour worn from all the years on the road. After a few songs worth of warming up, they got back on track and gave everyone a bit of nostalgia, it was good, everyone was pleased, no if’s and’s or but’s about it.

Minus the Bear closed out the night as a force to be reckoned with. With “Infinity Overhead” just debuting right before tour, it was safe to say, everyone was on pins and needles waiting to hear their set. As they came out on stage one by one, one thing was very apparent, they had cut their long hair and even longer beards. They did come out a little bit shaky, I will admit that, but after the first song, they plowed through the entire set while revealing little surprises along the way. The curtain dropped on a huge 20 foot banner half way through the set, along with the introduction of 5 huge clear beach balls right after that. The biggest surprise of the night was the introduction of some smooth saxophone replacing a handful of synth lines from a few songs.  Their set list included a little bit of every record from their discography with a major highlight on their newest album, with an additional three song encore, the night ended on a great note, no pun intended.

Information about the review…
Tour: Minus The Bear Fall Headline Tour
Bands: Minus The Bear, Cursive, and Caspian
Reviewer: Jim Vondruska
Date: September 14, 2012
Venue: The Rave in Milwaukee, WI