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Tuesday, November 5, 2019

White Reaper at the Bowery Ballroom

Vocalist/guitarist Tony Esposito and a pair of brothers, bassist Sam Wilkerson and drummer Nick Wilkerson, bonded over their love for all things punk and power-pop while attending middle school in Louisville, Kentucky. Together, they attended a local DIY venue every week and ultimately formed a garage punk band to play said venue. In time, White Reaper added keyboardist Ryan Hater and guitarist Hunter Thompson and the music evolved into a more polished guitar-rocking sound with giant riffs, even bigger choruses, and eardrum-rattling energy. White Reaper's first two albums, 2015's White Reaper Does It Again and 2017's The World's Best American Band, captured the band's wit. White Reaper released its third studio album, You Deserve Love, on October 18, 2019.

In just a couple of years, White Reaper has graduated from headlining a tiny New York club, Coney Island Baby, to the considerably larger Bowery Ballroom tonight. White Reaper's following has grown in direct parallel to the band's trajectory towards a cleaner pop sound. The musicians are in their mid-20s, and increasingly they are gravitating to a 1980s pop genre that pre-dated their birth. Light lead vocals, crisp harmonies, rallying choruses, twin-guitar leads and bouncy rhythms dominated the cheerful songs. Curiously, however, the band's bubble-gum rock has been burnished so slickly that one would think the band's potential audience is not old enough to get into an alcohol-serving establishment.

Setlist:
  1. I Don't Think She Cares
  2. Pills
  3. Little Silver Cross
  4. Raw
  5. Crystal Pistol
  6. Sheila
  7. Last 4th of July
  8. Ring
  9. Real Long Time
  10. Make Me Wanna Die
  11. The World's Best American Band
  12. Might Be Right
  13. 1F
  14. Daisies
  15. Half Bad
  16. Encore:
  17. The Stack
  18. You Deserve Love
  19. Judy French

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