popwreckoning

With the official start of Spring on March 21, comes the start of warmer weather, plants sprouting, and lots of big concert tours. The day after the vernal equinox, North America is treated to the Dirty Work tour featuring All Time Low, Yellowcard, Hey Monday and the Summer Set – that’s waaay better than some smelly flowers, right?

The trek kicks off March 22 in Philadelphia and is named the “Dirty Work” tour after All Time Low’s upcoming major label debut due out soon on DGC/Interscope. If you’re a fan of the bands spunky pop punk you can be sure to hear some of their new material on this tour. Frontman Alex Gaskarth promises this album will push the band past genre boundaries, but still feature their praised melodic guitar lines. The album also features two songs with special co-writers, Weezer‘s Rivers Cuomo and the other with Butch Walker.

Yellowcard is also touring in support of their upcoming release and this is their first tour in over three year.

So fans of pop punk and rock, get your tickets now because they’re selling out fast. Full dates are below and tickets are available here.

The Dirty Work Tour Dates:
Mar 22 – Philadelphia, PA – Electric Ballroom
Mar 23 – Sayreville, NJ – Starland Ballroom
Mar 25 – Sayreville, NJ – Starland Ballroom – sold out
Mar 26 – Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory – sold out
Mar 28 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club – sold out
Mar 29 – Charlotte, NC – The Fillmore
Mar 31 – Ft Lauderdale, FL – Revolution
Apr 01 – Orlando, FL – House of Blues
Apr 02 – Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle
Apr 04 – St Louis, MO – The Pageant
Apr 05 – Kansas City, MO – Beaumont Club
Apr 06 – Oklahoma City, OK – Diamond Ballroom
Apr 07 – Houston, TX – House of Blues
Apr 08 – Dallas, TX – Palladium Ballroom
Apr 09 – Austin, TX – Stubb’s Waller Creek Outdoor Amph.
Apr 11 – Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theatre
Apr 12 – Los Angeles, CA – Club Nokia at LA Live
Apr 13 – Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues
Apr 15 – Anaheim, CA – Grove of Anaheim
Apr 16 – San Francisco, CA – The Warfield Theatre
Apr 17 – Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom
Apr 18 – Seattle, WA – Showbox SoDo
Apr 21 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
Apr 22 – Milwaukee, WI – Eagles Ballroom
Apr 23 – Houghton, MI – Rozsca Center for the Performing Arts
Apr 25 – Toronto, ON – Sound Academy
Apr 26 – Cleveland, OH – House of Blues – sold out
Apr 28 – Detroit, MI – The Fillmore
Apr 29 – Chicago, IL – Congress Theatre
Apr 30 – Cincinnati, OH – Bogarts
May 03 – New York, NY – Best Buy Theater – sold out
May 04 – Allentown, PA – Crocodile Rock
May 05 – Clifton Park, NY – Northern Lights
May 06 – Boston, MA – House of Blues – sold out
May 07 – Baltimore, MD – UMBC Fieldhouse

Photographer Hilary J. Corts hit up the New York Warped Tour stop in Uniondale. She documented her day at the pop-punk-rock traveling festival. Check out her photos below:

All-American Rejects:

Andrew W.K.:

Breathe Electric:

Every Time I Die:

Jac Vanek & TWLOHA:

Polar Bear Club:

Sum 41:

The Bigger Lights:

The Rocket Summer:

The Summer Set:

View more of Hilary’s work at www.hilaryjcorts.com.

About two hours before doors at Station 4 in downtown St. Paul, a block-long line has formed of fans eager to hear a night of great live music. The bands are a pop-punker’s dream lineup: This Providence, The Summer Set, The Bigger Lights, and headliners Cartel. This is Cartel’s first tour with their new album Cycles and they are “just happy to be on the road again,” states bassist Jeff Lett. And apparently the mass amount of fans that keep arriving to the venue are happy about that too.

Originating as a high school/college collaboration among three different bands back in August of 2003, Cartel has gained popularity and a large fan base over the last six years. With the current onslaught of a large number of teenage angst-driven bands to emerge lately, it’s pretty phenomenal for a band to last six years in this music scene, let alone release three successful albums within that time. With fans at the show from early teens to late 50s, the band has proven to have a catchy, unique sound that appeals to fans of all ages.

However, as popular as they have become over the years, there is going to be some scrutiny. Referencing the MTV miniseries “Band in a Bubble” (when the band spent 23 days in a partially transparent bubble in New York City and emerged having fully completed their 2nd full length album, Cartel), guitarist Joe Pepper adds, “We got a lot of publicity from that and with any publicity there’s people judging all the time. People really liked [the album] and with any album there’s always some hate, but I don’t think any of it affected any of us too much.”

Apparently not, considering Station 4 appeared to fill up to near capacity before the guys even took the stage for their set. The fans were eager to hear old favorites as well as new songs from Cycles performed live for the first time.

With a set list spanning equally across the bands 3 albums (Chroma, Cartel, Cycles) and including fan-favorites like “Honestly,” “Say Anything (Else)” and my personal favorite “Matter of Time,” the guys are partial to playing songs that are “close to home”, says drummer Kevin Sanders. “We love playing ‘Deep South,’ because it’s just so heavy. It has kind of become what “Georgia” and “Burn This City” were to us in the past.”

A recent label change from Epic to Wind Up Records has allowed the band a chance to be extremely unique within their new label family and express this “heavier” side. With labelmates like Creed and Seether, the band is able to get the deserved, undivided publicity that is sometimes lost in a label that is chock full of bands from the same genre. Pepper comments, “[Wind Up] doesn’t have a lot of bands that are like us. We don’t have to compete. When we were on Epic, we were competing with bands like Good Charlotte and Quietdrive; it’s time to get radio play though. They can push Creed and us at the same time and not have to worry about stepping on anyone’s toes. It just works out better.”

After a two year process of writing and recording, Cartel finally released their much anticipated third full length album, entitled Cycles, with Wind Up. With an album full of catchy, upbeat Chroma-esque tracks like “Faster Ride” and first single “Let’s Go,” ballad staples like “Only You,” and even some edgier tunes like “27 Steps,” Cartel fans will not be disappointed with their newest debut. Still holding on to the old Cartel sound of pop-punk power songs full of open ended messages, the band has proven to continue to step away from the cookie-cutter songs about high school love and loss and choose to write songs that are open for fans to define their own individual interpretations on the meanings.

With songs like Chroma’s “Minstrel’s Prayer” and Cycle’s “Retrograde,” Cartel continues to make the kind of music that allows fans to give a song a personal meaning that can adapt with every situation and shift into something completely different each time the hear a song. The band’s hook-driven music is the type that has staying power because it is so easily identifiable with each new fan that turns on their music and hears a song like “Save Us” for the first time. Even the album title can hold many different connotations. When asked about the significance behind the term “Cycles,” guitarist Pepper simply stated, “It means whatever you think it means.” That fan-powered idea is what has kept Cartel around and relevant for so long.

The band continues to keep their sights high, saying that a dream tour with include Van Halen. Now, I don’t know how compatible those two bands would be together, considering the crowd would be hilariously random, but could we be on the lookout for a tour collaboration with Van Halen? If the boys keep churning out hit-making music, nothing is impossible for Cartel.

Cartel: website | myspace

Written by: Sarah Hassan

While adjusting to the Daylight Savings time change and recovering from Halloween, take it easy today and play on Facbook and maybe stream some tunes on MySpace.

Then when you’re on Facebook, became a fan of PopWreckoning. Go to our page here.

To make it a little more fun, if you join and email us (popwreck @ gmail.com) before Friday, Nov. 6 at 10 p.m. CDT, we’ll choose five of our new adds to win a free the Summer Set album Love Like This.

The Summer Set are a great pop rock band out on tour with Cartel right now. Listen to them on MySpace.

As of now, you can stream Cartel‘s new album Cycles using Twitter. If you don’t have an account, it takes just a moment to set up. Then go to  http://cartel.culturejam.com.

The album will hit stores Oct. 20. You can watch the new video for the first single “Let’s Go” here.

Cartel is set to head out on tour in support of the album with This Providence and The Summer Set, starting on October 22nd through the end of November.

Cartel: website | myspace