Images: I Call Fives, Last Call, Alaska, Merit August 11, 2012 at Zia West

I Call Fives’ recently-released self-titled debut continues Pure Noise Records’ streak of excellent albums in 2012. The band’s sugary pop punk sound is reminiscent of 2003’s crop of Drive-Thru and Drive-Thru-influenced pop punk – the likes of The Starting Line, New Found Glory, and Fall Out Boy. The band proudly displays those influences on the album’s first single “Stuck in ’03,” which includes lines like “I was listening to Take This To Your Grave, So Long Astoria and Nothing Gold Can Stay/You said I’m filling my head with nonsense and I’m throwing my life away.” And as someone whose formative show-going years were during this period I can say that the band’s live show more than stacks up with their heavy-weight influences.

Frontman Jeff Todd’s vocals sound just as good, if not better live. The rest of the band was bursting with energy that night, spending half the set in mid jump while Todd shared vocal duties with the crowd on the aforementioned “Stuck in ‘03” and more familiar cuts from the band’s previous Bad Advice EP “Two Days Or A Lifetime Of Failure” and set ender “Elevator Music.” I Call Fives are only going to get bigger as more people discover their full-length so the few dozen people packed into Zia West’s humid halls that night are going to be lucky to say that they saw them first.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the show-ending set from locals Last Call. It was probably the best set I’ve seen from them since their EP release show last year, due in large part to vocalist Austin Jeffers being able to once again feed off an up-close, larger than usual crowd of enthusiastic fans screaming along with every word from the band’s two EPs. The only times the sing-alongs died down were when they played two fantastic new songs – “Bones” and “Hummer” – both set to be on the band’s upcoming full-length.

-Emily Matview | https://www.flickr.com/photos/holdfastnow/