Located about a half-dozen miles from downtown Boston proper, on the literal banks of the historic Mystic River, lies Deep Cuts. It’s a venue that’s carved itself a niche as a destination spot over the last three years; the brick walls and tin ceiling of the live music room and adjoining pinball arcade and sandwich counter/record shop project a no-frills spot that’s been all but gentrified out of the city itself, particularly since Covid. And selfishly, as a long-time resident of Boston’s northern suburbs, it’s wonderful to have a venue that you can get to door-to-door in twelve minutes without taking the highway. Perfect spot for the one-and-only Smoking Popes to kick off the northeast run on their 35th Anniversary tour!
The premise of this current tour is to celebrate all corners of the Popes extensive catalog; night one features songs from Get Fired (1993), Destination Failure (1997), Stay Down (2008) and Into The Agony (2018), while night two highlights Born To Quit (1994), The Party’s Over (2003), This Is Only A Test (2011), and their latest record, last year’s Lovely Stuff. This creates the effect of having two nights worth of a mix of longtime crowd favorites and deeper cuts that don’t see the traditional light of day in a standard Popes set circa 2026, and gives the current lineup – Josh Caterer on vocals and guitar as always, joined as has been the case more often than not lately by Reuben Baird on bass, Jack Sibilski on lead guitar and John Perrin on drums – plenty of space to explore and jam and shred their punk rock hearts content.
Night one – Thursday 7/23 – kicked off with the always enjoyable Into The Agony track “Simmer Down,” which sounds like it was written to be a show opener, a perfect, punchy, two-and-a-half-minute anthem to staying in the fight. From there, the quartet blazed through another dozen-and-a-half tracks from the four albums of the moment; “Star Struck One” into “No More Smiles,” into “Let’s Hear It For Love,” “Stay Down” into Jawbreaker-ode “You Spoke To Me” into “Welcome To Janesville,” and on and on through an energetic hour-plus set. Sibilski is a constant ball of frenetic energy, while Baird and Perrin are a remarkable locked-in rhythm section, not just for the first night of a tour. Later in the set, the crew went perhaps predictably off-script by throwing the classic “Need You Around” into the set. They went even further off-script during the encore, adding a request – “Writing A Letter” – for a fan who’d come all the way from the Popes’ hometown of Chicago.
Night two started with the already classic “Golden Moments” from last year’s Lovely Stuff, another perfect, anthemic ode, this time a paean to the power of live music. Both nights’ sets were high energy as you might imagine, but night two seemed like it was ratcheted up by a few degrees. The crowd seemed a little bit more engaged a little bit earlier in the set as well. “Rubella” and “Midnight Moon” and “Madison” and “Fox River Dream,” and some extended guitar shredding on “Gotta Know Right Now” have that effect on people. The standalone single “Allegiance” appeared late in the set and is always a personal favorite of mine. “Need You Around” made another appearance late in the set, as did “Writing A Letter” again, much to the enjoyment of the same Chicago crew from the evening before. Two Smoking Popes shows in two nights about a block from my office made me, in a word, happy. I see a lot of live music (obviously) and most of it is good and some of it is great and a lot of it is cathartic. But the Popes live experience makes me uniquely happy, even all of these years later, which is maybe a little ironic given that so much of their back catalog especially is about pain and heartache and unrequited love. But Josh and the crew make it sound so fun!
Radiator Hospital opened both of these shows in Medford, and indeed, all shows on this Northeast run. Based in Philly, the now one-man project that’s the brainchild of Sam Cook-Parrott is as much performance art as it is a live music show. Backed solely by a tape player that he frequently manipulates to cue up and pitch-change backing tracks, Cook-Parrott sings and dances his way along to the music in a way that’s as earnest and individual as any set I’ve seen in recent memory. There were more than a handful of fans who voiced that they’d come to both shows specifically for Radiator Hospital, and then stayed for the Popes’ sets, becoming new fans of the seminal band in the process. That, right there, is what live music and this scene are all about. Also, shout out to the one-man Wall Of Death during Radiator Hospital’s set during night two; little fella couldn’t have been more than three years old himself, and was a cosntant ball of energy, running back-and-forth non-stop at the front of the stage for the better part of half an hour.
Check out more pictures from the evening down below!