Silversun Pickups & Third Eye Blind Give Unique Takes on Nostalgia in Raleigh (SHOW REVIEW)

“Who would have thought that, 20 years after our first album, we’d be sold out in Raleigh?” Third Eye Blind singer Stephan Jenkins posed this question to the variously-aged throng at Raleigh’s Red Hat Amphitheater, and any of the 6,000 in attendance, given the chance, would have most likely replied “Not me, Stephan.” The 22-year-olds stared witlessly, but none of the grey-haired contingents of guys in attendance could have possibly thought that Third Eye Blind would still be a thing in 2017, and that the 52-year-old Jenkins would still be commanding amphitheaters full of the devoted.

Say what you will about the music, Third Eye Blind has never stopped touring, their fan base is surprisingly young, and they’re probably going to be around for another 20 years. They have emerged victorious from the late 90’s mishmash of sensitive, hopelessly agreeable rock bands that vied for airwave supremacy at the end of the glory days of “grunge”.

Typical of any Raleigh show in the summer, thunderstorms skirted the area all evening. Openers Ocean Park Standoff offered a wholly unremarkable opening set, and the Third Eye crowd seemed entirely underwhelmed by Silversun Pickups, despite another heartfelt performance from the shoegazey L.A. rock veterans. Eternally undeterred, the quartet doled out yet another fantastic set of their best-known songs.

Silversun Pickups last played this venue in 2013, but ever-thoughtful frontman Brian Aubert said he “remembered the tree”, referring to the oak tree design that comprises the giant “shimmer wall” that overlooks the amphitheater. They’re still one of the world’s most likeable bands, oozing diverse personalities from the stage. Aubert is inclusive and heartfelt in his interactions, nearly stepping off the stage lip in his attempts to get closer to the crowd; drummer Chris Guanloa drives the band without saying a word, his frenzied smashing matched by his swirling maelstrom of hair; Nikki Monninger plays bashful, but her bass work is one of the defining traits of the band; and Joe Lester quietly adds the necessary keyboard sound to the band’s often chaotic songs, helping tunes like “The Royal We” and “Well Thought Out Twinkles” sound as huge as they should. Other highlights included the crowd-pleasing “Lazy Eye”,  the sprawling, dramatic “Dots and Dashes” and the gently pulsating lovefest “Circadian Rhythm”. The 11-song set culminated in an unhinged, noisy version of “Panic Switch”.

Many in attendance expressed confusion at the pairing of a vaguely demented, densely distorted, wordy band like Silversun Pickups with the often anthem-like simplicity of Third Eye Blind. It’s a fair point, but, Third Eye Blind’s music is also a hell of a lot darker than most of these folks realize. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Third Eye Blind’s landmark 1997 self-titled album, Jenkins has had the whole thing played “from front to back”, as he put it, for this tour. They led off with a few new offerings – “Company of Strangers, “Shipboard Cook”, and the show-opening snippet of “Weightless”, which handily references the name of the tour in the lyric “Summer gods got me screaming”. The crowd ate it all up, from the new stuff to the 20-somthing album that is undeniably part of our existence.

After toiling for years in the early 90’s, Jenkins struck gold in his early 30’s with “Semi-Charmed Life”, a defining track that is oddly unlike the rest of the band’s catalog. He knows that song is the moment people pay to see, and in Raleigh he milked the gentle refrain of the song for a brief cellphone rant (“No iPhone can capture this moment!”) and reflected on the past 20 years. These are the songs that mercilessly assaulted anyone who dared listen to rock radio in the late 90’s, the surprisingly endearing, often misappropriated, suicide-referencing “Jumper” and the minivan ballad “How’s It Gonna Be?” among them.  Lesser hits like “Graduate” and “God of Wine” – the kind of deep cuts that used to take hold of an audience during a platinum album selling cycle – worked just as well during this set.

No one goes to a Third Eye Blind show to have their third eye opened. This show is a few thousand people out for a fun night and a few thousand who genuinely connect with the band’s music. It is a fun show for those who were absorbed into that moment in the late 90’s, during one of the last hurrahs of the record-buying generation – the last gasp of the gargantuan recording contract and the bloated, petulant record industry. Perhaps it’s not very much of a surprise that Third Eye Blind came out on top of the piles of Eve Sixes, Gin Blossoms and Better Than Ezras. Jenkins certainly pulled no punches while they rose to prominence, and based on his tireless performance in Raleigh, he’s still throwing plenty of them 20 years later.