Live Review: Cinematic Sunrise
Posted 12/17/2009 07:53AM by Aaron Yarborough as Show Review
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the three California tour stops this past weekend for the final three Cinematic Sunrise shows on the West Coast. Misdelphia was originally on just the final San Diego date but was able to score the other two shows last minute which turned into one hell of a fun weekend. Capping it all off was my birthday on Sunday (December 6th) for the final show in San Diego.
The first show was Thursday night at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, California, and was a packed house. Misdelphia took the stage first and seemed to win over most of the attendees with their infectious blend of pop/punk and rock as they blazed through their new EP, as well as their Taylor Swift “Love Story” cover. You could tell they definitely garnered some new fans, which was all they could have hoped for since the Orange County scene is one of the best in California.
Next up was Sleeping With Sirens, who seem to have burst onto the scene in no time scoring this first tour with Jonny Craig / Tides of Man and within the first week of the tour were announced as signing to Rise Records. By the second week they had picked up Dave Shapiro (The Agency Group) as their booking agent, and by the third week they had Outerloop Management handling those duties. Needless to say has been an exciting month for this five piece which has formed and comes from all corners of the country. Their sound can best be described as a new school scene sound along the lines of such bands as Of Mice & Men, Broadway, and We Came As Romans. The key features for them are high pitched vocals and a metal feel to the instrumentation. They're still developing and not totally my thing, but you can see them going places, especially with the team they have behind them.
Mark Rose then came out with his acoustic guitar to play a bunch of Spitalfield songs as well as some of his own solo stuff. He is an amazing lyricist and songwriter and a lot of Spitalfield fans came out and sang along with him. It wasn’t very eventful just having one guy on stage playing music but was definitely a solid addition to the line-up.
Tides of Man then played about four songs before becoming the backing band for Jonny Craig. So it was like they split their set since Jonny usually only performed about five songs. Tides of Man sound pretty good like a mix of Portugal. The Man and Closure in Moscow; the musicians in the band are a amazing and the singing seemed to compliment the sound quite well, keeping things from being too dark and heavy. The singer sort of reminded me of Claudio from Coheed and Cambria a bit as well.
After about a five minute break Jonny Craig came out and went straight into “I Still Feel Her Part 3” and was in top notch form from the opening note. This got most of the crowd into the set right away as this is the song he has a video for. Blazing through most of his hit solo songs “7AM, 2 Bottles and the Wrong Road” and “Children of Divorce” while including one of my favorites “What I Would Give to be Australian” he closed his set with an acoustic track to calm the mood. Those fans who saw this tour in San Diego were also treated to a special guest in Vic Fuentes (Pierce the Veil) where he and Jonny did “She Makes Dirty Words Sound Pretty.” It was a quick set from Jonny, but still very powerful, and he nails every note of his vocals no matter how drunk or faded he would get before the band would play.
Cinematic Sunrise then took the stage after a short break. Having only recorded/written 8 songs in their lifetime you knew exactly what you were going to hear at these shows. The band which features former Chiodos frontman Craig Owens along with his childhood friends Brian Beeler (guitar) and Marcus Vankirk (bass) was joined recently by Nick Martin (guitar) and filling in on drums was Nash Breem (ex-Armor for Sleep). Those who have been following the Craig Owens twitter saga would have figured out that for the Anaheim and Hollywood shows the band was joined by Pete Wentz on bass for three songs. One can only speculate what the Craig + Pete partnership can hold, but it definitely brought some recognition around the country to their final shows and you can more than likely find some videos of the guest appearance up on youtube. The best part of the night for me was the encore. Having already played all eight songs, most kids, at least at the San Diego show, left the venue while a select few chanted “One More Song!” The band returned to the stage after performing their final song “You Told Me You Loved Me” to do a new “metal” version of it. The song must have been masterminded by Nick Martin as it began with the drum beat from Underminded’s “Support the Scene, Quit Your Band” and then proceeded into a full out mosh/hardcore dance oriented rendition of “You Told Me You Loved Me” chalked full of screams from Martin and Craig which really got the crowd excited and moving. I doubt anyone had anticipated anything like this at a Cinematic Sunrise show, but it definitely left the fans with something to talk about. This can also most likely be seen on youtube as everyone was recording these shows.
All in all the shows were a success, the crowd in San Diego seemed a lot less responsive than the crowds in Anaheim and Hollywood, which was kind of a bummer, but it could have been due to the show being later on a Sunday night after an already exhausting weekend. We did however get to stay at Pete Wentz's Beverly Hills mansion on Friday after the show and spent the entire next day at John Feldmann’s house in his studio in which recording took place for about 16 hours before I drove home. The entire weekend was a blast and I couldn’t have imagined spending my birthday with a better group of guys, bonding, doing some backup/gang vocals in the studio and otherwise just enjoying myself. That’s about all I can say about the studio but be prepared for some amazing songs coming from someone/somewhere in the very near future!
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San Jose, CA
What you did afterward sounds incredible.
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Dubuque
So jealous. So so jealous.
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Atascadero, CA
pete gave us a tour of his house. he has life-side simpsons characters sitting in his exercise room. said john mayer gave him the real r2d2 from star wars in his game room. had the disney artist design/draw his entire kids' room with winnie the poo characters and just had a ton of rad art everywhere. got to see his office room which contains endless amounts of gold/platinum album plaques from him and ashlee and panic! and some others. then spent the next day at john feldmann's house just chillin watching nick martin record guitar tracks for like 13hours and doing some gang vocals on some new owens songs. just demos but they sounded epic as holy hell.
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