Struts blow writer’s mind: how?

Portland’s Crystal Ballroom hosted The Struts on Nov. 10, and they killed it!

Just like any other stereotypical concert, they had lights, they had amps and they had a huge crowd. The difference was that their opener killed it, The Struts were on point, and there wasn’t a time where we weren’t screaming and yelling for more music. The crowd was crazy, too. With drunk people everywhere, die hard fans, and sweaty people singing, it was surprisingly still really enjoyable.

The opener, Andrew Watt, shredded it, too. He started out slow but then he picked it up in the middle, making the crowd go wild. His tools to make us lose our minds were a couple covers of Led Zeppelin and a few songs from his new EP, which warranted an explosion from the crowd. Some crazy fan then threw a lighter at Andrew Watt; he took the lighter, then proceeded to electrify the crowd by moving onto a kick-ass guitar solo using the thrown lighter. He followed with two more guitar solos behind his head, and one in the glorious lights on stage.

Watts by himself deserved a encore for how outstanding he was.

Finally, The Struts rushed on stage with each band member taking their place, looking out to the huge crowd that was us. When they started playing it was like everything in life was finally coming together: The long, cold line we had waited in and the huge sweaty crowd that we were moshing in all meant nothing when they started to play.

They started the show with more of their upbeat tracks, pumping up the crowd with various solos from the band. But then they got lost in the crowd and the lead singer just kept pumping up the crowd, asking the crowd to yell. He did this for such a long time, the people started screaming for him to go back to singing. After that, the concert began again and the crowd was happy again.

With all of them rocking the show, the crowd had never been happier. The Struts were definitely worth the 94 cents.

The Struts were a 4 out of 5 stars. The music was really good, the opener was really good, but The Struts had too much filler. They were especially fond of call-and-answer-vocals – at least 45 minutes of the whole concert was spent that way for their lead singer’s amusement.

But after that they continued the show and God damn, did they melt our minds. Overall, it was a really good experience and if they come back to Portland, guess who will be first in line?