It was almost as if the organizers of this schedule right-clicked and selected arrange in order of date. As the night went on the audience gradually traveled back in time through different rock epochs, wondering how one could have possibly led to the other.

The freshest of the bands was the opening act RX Bandits. Warning: Expect big hair, head bands, improvised jams, and Gibson Les Pauls. Matt Embree’s vocal chords were taken from listeners before the audience had a chance to love them enough. With the entire front of house going deathly silent after a few songs, the rest of the set seemed to promise not much more than an engineer running back and forth with his torch. The technical difficulties resulted in crude bass solos and Embree getting down on his knees to sing privately to the faces in the front row. In a generous act, after being informed by the crowd that nothing was coming through the speaker system, Embree turned the fold back speakers towards the crowd and played the last ten minutes dry. Not many bands would have been able to get away with these technical mishaps, but it was a credit to the improvisational nature of the hard-working RX Bandits.

All fears were put to rest in the Motion City Soundtrack sound check, when the microphones were tested and cheered by the eager audience for their new signs of life. The very animated Justin Pierre launched in to the new single Disappear, making exaggerated signals to the sound desk. The crowd sang the entire introduction and first line of Future Freaks Me Out, before Pierre decided to earn his pay. A clap broke out in the “Betty” breakdown and it coincided with robotic dance movements by Pierre. These robot moves were a motif throughout the set. The singles kept rolling with the cult anthem My Favourite Accident and then Broken Heart being played in quick succession, with some acrobatic stylings from Jesse Johnson on keys. The singing fest continued for the crowd with This Is For Real before Pierre stopped to pay homage to the night’s line-up in his own unusual and energetic way. The power pop set concluded with the single Everything Is Alright from the Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus produced Commit This To Memory album.

Next up were Glassjaw, who opened with the epic Mu Empire. This song soon separated the zealots from the bystanders, forming a ring of nothingness for the push pit to reside within. Daryl Palumbo rivaled Pierre’s creative hand actions, alerting the sound desk that he was “feeding back a lot” by singing it as one of the lines in a song. The next track was the unreleased All Good Junkies Go To Heaven, which involved two forms of tapping; with Justin Beck tapping frantically on the fret board and Palumbo tapping the inside of his arm at the veins. This particular song has been creating a lot of hype for their forthcoming album, given its busy drumming and guitar work.
These opening two numbers had the crowd screaming requests, to which Palumbo replied, “If you just say it I’ll totally hear it”.

The squeaky Palace system lived up to its early queries, feeding back so loud that Palumbo actually looked in pain, sticking his fingers in his ears. Palumbo, renowned for his sincere, diary-like lyrics, dedicated a song to his father and all of our fathers – stressing that they weren’t the same. It was obvious that the sound desk had saved a bit of volume for these three top-line acts, and so Glassjaw blared for the next half hour bordering the line perfectly between the intense and tangible. It was therapeutic.

Next up was the much anticipated Sunny Day Real Estate. They opened up as expected, with songs Seven and In Circles from their first album Diary. They only seemed to harvest their live crop from their recently re-released first two albums, showing the generation gap with their use of effects sufficiently spanning from clean to distortion. The keyboards and synthesizers of the opening bands were long gone and the audience had arrived back in the nineties.

The next five minutes were easily the most meditative of the set as they eased in to the ups and downs of 48. As Jeremy Enigk sung the words: “try to reveal myself, fear inside”, the side of stage held the entire line ups of Motion City Soundtrack, RX Bandits plus Justin Beck of Glassjaw and a line of backstage crew all standing in stillness and awe. There were more people to the side of stage than I have ever seen, like something pivotal in history was taking place. It was as if Enigk was finally emerging out of a dark cave, but never would the humble lead singer have expected the welcome and respect that this entire room endowed to him. Enigk, eternally gracious, proclaimed how much he loved Jimmy Eat World and how grateful he was to be on this Melbourne stage. The feeling was obviously reciprocated by every set of eyes and ears in the Palace establishment.

The black curtain was pulled to the side and the words Jimmy Eat World suddenly pinched our eyes, snapping us out of our Sunny Day Real Estate contentment and preparing us for the arrival of Jim Adkins in his predictable black pants and black button-up shirt. His attire was a certainty, what we did take bets on however was the first song. Two of the obvious bets ended up first and second, beginning with the long designated opener A Praise Chorus and then launching in to a tour-obligated Big Casino. Your New Aesthetic_ and the arpeggio introduction of Work soon calmed the crowd and four songs in Adkins stopped to say how happy he was to be playing a track off the new album and eased in to Chase This Light. Another of the opening song wagers finally arrived with the repetitive one-chord introduction and soaring riffs of Futures. You know a crowd is at their tragic stage when they are launching the “finger point” in to the air and jabbing it upward at each syllable of the lyrics that they are singing. This is what came with Futures, and even Adkins opted for it when singing the words: “now’s the time to disagree”, perhaps to boost our self-esteem.

Clarity fans soon got their dose when the snare drum and clasped hi-hat introduction of Lucky Denver Mint arrived. If that wasn’t enough, it was backed up by the stuttering opening rhythms of Goodbye Sky Harbor though surely many punters yearned for the sixteen-minute version. The strobe light began to flicker and a single bass drum rhythm hinted the beginnings of the 2004 single Pain. After the wailing solo and cranking volume of the final chorus Adkins took a well-earned break to talk about the other bands on the bill.

Just when the audience assumed the night had reached an emotional peak, with the upbeat likes of Bleed American and Blister following the ballad, Adkins was handed an acoustic guitar. The lighters came out as he strummed the soothing chorus pervaded chords of cult favorite Hear You Me. The night came to a close on a faster Bleed American note, with power singles The Middle and Sweetness, leaving the amps buzzing on stage like a construction site. This set delivered so much more depth than their short stint as a Greenday support some years back, and this depth meant a lot more to my friend and I than leaving with Adkins’ broken black Telecaster body. Physical mementoes gather dust, but this time we left the Palace with weighty memories.

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