Friday night at the Memorial Union was surely a night to remember for those who were in the Great Hall for the concert there that night. The energy that filled the room was contagious to even the most reserved of people who may have stumbled into the room that night. I give huge props to the SUB putting the night together, all of the staff that helped make the concert possible, and of course the incredible sound of the bands that absolutely lit the whole crowd up with energy. And then left them not only wanting more, but motivating them to be better then they were when they arrived.

Kicking off the concert was a band by the name of TwinXL, a fairly new band who’ve only been together for about a year. Consisting of four guys including John Gomez, their lead guitarist, Stephen Gomez, their bassist, Cameron Walker, their lead singer and backup guitarist, and drummer who they said was a friend of theirs they called in. But, right off the bat I have to say, watching that drummer play was an experience in and of itself, it’s a wonder how a person sitting stationary in a chair could still move twice as much as anyone else in the entire band. He killed it. But, to talk about the performance itself, we got the pleasure of hearing two brand new songs from TwinXL, one called “Melt”, which was one of my personal favorites. And the second called “Messy”. If I wanted to give a brief description of what I thought of them, for me I was reminded a lot of Twenty One Pilots in the way that they played and formatted their songs, having a lot of character into their verses and choruses, with some added rap parts just to shake it up. The band was interacted with the crowd, made me laugh, made me relate to them, and overall just felt like they two were having the time of their lives up there on the stage as well. Both of their new songs are ready and waiting for the band’s tour coming up in Maine, so if you want to support them, check them out there and cheer them on enough to potentially come back and absolutely rock our school to the core once again.

Now onto the highlight of the night. Lovely. The. Band. Three simple words, for a not so simple band, in fact it was an absolutely alien experience seeing them perform. Coming in for another year, we got the pleasure of once again hearing the fantastic music that is LovelyTheBand. Even in our modest hall in the Union, they spared no expense of making sure it felt like being at a full performance hall and giving us the absolute best experience I could have hoped for. The music was nothing but incredible that I don’t even feel I need to go into it, they killed every song in their set and the crowd followed them every step of the way. That is, if you can get an entire room of college students to yell “These are my friends. These are my friends. I love them, I love them.” then you certainly are doing something right. Coming out of the concert, strangely enough the thing that was on my mind personally, wasn’t the music. Well, besides the sudden addition of “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers that made absolutely everyone go nuts. Mitchey, the lead singer, not only rocked our minds with music, but also connected to us on a heart-to-heart level. I mean, when going into a concert, the last thing I expect to do is to suddenly have an introspective analysis of myself and the life we have here at ISU, but the way he presented their songs, and the stories he told us between songs lead me to that. And he was certainly right, between all of the head aches, the heart aches, the tests, the classes, the professors, the long bus rides, rainy days, you name it. The thing that matters most to our lives here at ISU are the people that we meet, the experiences that we have, and the memories that we make and will remember when we look back at who we were 20, 30 years from now. Because that’s what really matters, and for me personally, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that concert, or that band. So thank you LovelyTheBand, thank you for coming and once again and giving us a night to remember. We hope to see you again.

Until next time.