Review: Simple Plan at Metro City

Simple Plan at Metro City
w/ Boys Like Girls, We The Kings, Jax
Sunday, April 7, 2024

“It’s not just a phase. Twenty-two years later, this is the proof right here,” lead singer Pierre Bouvier declared before Simple Plan launched into their 2002 hit I’m Just a Kid.

He was right. The proof is there. Twenty-two years later, they still have sold-out crowds screaming the words back at them. Every. Single. Line.

In 2004, this band had a stranglehold on pop culture: the Warped Tour aesthetic, broken discmans worn out from playing Still Not Getting Any one too many times, and heated debates about who was cooler, Good Charlotte or Simple Plan?

The fear of going into a Simple Plan show in 2024 is the idea that maybe the gig will coast on nostalgia. Do they still have it in them two decades later to deliver a huge show? Sunday night was anything but an easy nostalgia trip for a quick payday. Simple Plan showed what a band with staying power looks like.

Simple Plan formed in 1999 in Montreal, Canada, by a mishmash of high school friends and previous bandmates. Described by their label as having “classic punk energy and modern pop sonics," the group exploded in 2002 with their debut album, No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls, and again in 2004 with Still Not Getting Any going platinum.

Since then, they’ve released four more studio albums, embarked on multiple world tours, and had tracks featured in cult classics What’s New, Scooby-Doo?, and Mary-Kate and Ashley’s New York Minute. Now, for the first time in 11 years, the boys have returned to Perth, playing the stickiest floor in the southern hemisphere, Metro City, in support of their latest record, Harder Than It Looks.

Jax, We The Kings, and Boys Like Girls seemed to be the perfect choices to round out a stacked line-up of opening acts. While playing set lists that were admittedly unfamiliar to a lot of the crowd, self-awareness and live show savviness meant the night never lost momentum or energy.

Jax injected some girly pop energy into the evening with the opening set. As the crowd began to settle in and the excitement began to build, the addictive nature of her hooks and melodies was hard to ignore.

We The Kings vocalist Travis Clark, teaching us his daughters own choreography, turned one of their lesser-known tracks into the biggest party of their set. The band also teased their hit Check Yes, Juliet, multiple times to build suspense, including a memorable pivot into a Wonderwall cover.

Next up, Boys Like Girls adopted an irresistible, distorted 80s prom band aesthetic that played out fantastically. During their biggest hit, The Great Escape, they brought back Love Drunk for a huge ending, like a stage musical bringing back one more emotional reprise.

An opening slot can often be a thankless job, but all three openers came prepared and reached into their bag of tricks to set Metro City up, so Simple Plan could knock ’em down.

Simple Plan are a band of workhorses. Even this far into their career, you'll rarely see Pierre avoiding the difficult high notes, while Seb and Jeff’s interplay as guitarists is on point and Chuck can still stage dive with the best of them. The group’s synergy and stage presence attest to a professionalism and genuine care for what they do. This isn’t a band that coasts on their laurels or relaxes because their tour has already sold well. They looked like a band willing to put in the work, physically and musically, to give every show their all. Evidently, it’s paying off in spades, with multiple shows added on their Australian tour to meet such high demand.

That demand speaks to a desire from Australian audience to see acts like this more often. The passion of the audience, going to see a band that’ll make them scream and cry, is hard to ignore. Grown men bawled their eyes out to Perfect while their partners comforted them, showing this isn’t a release we’re getting to feel as much as we need. Dudes who were content standing with a beer, head banging slightly, but not so much that they give up the visage of being chill, were reduced to atoms at the very notion of an emotional song about their fathers.

With so much of the Australian music industry revolving around what’s cool, what’s chill, what’s anything but cringe, it's reasonable to accept the unabashed emotion and often times corniness of pop punk, as a dove over an emotionally distant flood. Sometimes we need to unleash our inner eight year old. The resurgence of 00s pop punk can definitely be attributed to that irresistible nostalgia, but while that draws us in, we stay because we’re given permission to break down that fear of seeming cringe, and openly feel our emotions as strongly as we need to.

Simple Plan seem to know this, and have kept their staying power more so than hundreds of other acts from that era. Surprisingly, the biggest pop of the night wasn’t from one of their earliest hits, it was 2011’s Jet Lag. An arena rock love song that doesn’t see us melodramatically screaming “welcome to my life” or “I’m sorry I can’t be perfect,” it soared with its sticky guitar line as Metro City exploded with energy. Releasing music on a consistent schedule and regular touring means the boys aren’t rusty in the slightest, and their set list can span decades with very little discrepancy in popularity between songs. Simple Plan are here to stay, and it’s easy to see why.

If our own production quality could rise to meet the work of the performers we support, we’d have a winning formula. An accidental switch from the video screen visuals to a MacBook desktop mid-set; vocal microphones sitting well under the mix and guitars cutting out too early didn’t ruin the night by any means, but you couldn’t help but wish the tech could match the high quality of performance.

“I can’t believe we don’t come here more often. We’re fucking idiots,” said Pierre before the final song, adding that they don’t take their sold-out shows in Perth for granted. It’s not something Perth audiences should take for granted, either. It’s a special thing to see a band with such a specific nostalgic niche shine as performers. It’s an even more special thing to see their songs still resonate so deeply with a multi-generational crowd.

TAYLOR BROADLEY

Photos by Paul Dowd