An Honest Account of a House Party

BY SYDNEY SALK

“Who’s ready for Pattern Addict?” screamed Joe as I entered the room. He was wearing the shirt he purchased off their defunct TeeSpring. I prodded him: “Wow, you’re really gonna be that guy who wears the band’s shirt to their own show.” And he was. He’s their biggest fan.

The pregame at Joe’s room proved this wasn’t going to be your typical sparsely attended indie gig. The fact that there even was a pregame proved that I was making a mistake by going to the show sober. Alas, it was my only choice. I was getting an MRI that week, and the doctor urged me to refrain from drinking during the days leading up to it. But I had to go to the show. I had a friend in the band, the show was free and just about everyone I knew was going. 

I decided my sobriety would be an homage to my friend who was playing; he told me at a 4/20 show that he prefers to be mentally present so that he can have an honest experience with the music. I prefer that too, but I had a feeling that I was going to be the only one who was grounded. I’m not one of those people who are still fun when they’re sober; my social anxiety and inherent stoicism render me into a miserable lamppost. But if I was going to be present, I was going to make something of it, so I kept my notes app open all night, jotting down casual observations. 

At the show, Joe fought his way to the front, prying one set of eyelids while shutting the other to request their most recent single, “One Eye Open”. While his dedication to the band bordered on the verge of ‘dad at a Bruce Springsteen concert fanaticism’, it was honest. I don't know if I can say that anyone else felt that strongly. This lack of care was just the nature of the gig, the crowd, and the school. 

Usually, when you go to a show, it’s because you support the band (or you're being dragged along by a friend who supports the band). You’re usually paying some sort of fee, whether it be a few bucks at the door or an expensive StubHub purchase. People dance and make out and do drugs, but everyone’s united by a common focus. You are here to see the band. But upon walking into the townhouse where the show was being held, it was clear that not everyone was there to see the band. It was a free party on a Saturday night… need I say more? Of course, a lot of the things that happen on a Saturday night are the things that happen at a regular gig.  People still dance and make out and do drugs, but on Saturday night they do that to raging techno or Soundcloud rap: music that you don’t need to mentally engage with, just a pounding beat that your body inherently knows how to move with. 

Vassar’s party culture is nothing compared to that of any state school, but the student body at large doesn’t want rock as their chosen party genre. Most of the acts that are brought to play here are low-fi hip hop or feminist rap; that’s just what’s “in” right now. The only stuff that could be defined as rock comes from student bands like Pattern Addict (who formed at their Vermont high school and play at the college of whoever’s dorm they can crash at for the weekend). These bands play on a Thursday in the school’s dingy basement venue because people are too tired by a full day of classes to attend a more intense event. If Pattern Addict played on a Thursday, the entire audience would be rapt, but it was Saturday, and folk-rock is not the soundtrack of a Saturday night out.

And yet, because it was free, that’s how it had to be. I entered the house to Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” the most bizarre choice of college gig house music I had ever encountered, and awaited the entrance of the opener, Pander. Pander is the sole band at Vassar for whom Saturday nights make sense. They market themselves as a party band who exists only to prove their moniker to the audience. Postmodern college band-ism at its finest. “FOLK-ROCK!” screamed the frontman, explicitly telling the crowd how they were being pandered to. “FOLK-ROCK!”. But were people here for folk-rock? Everything looked more like a nightclub to me. Girls wearing lingerie gyrated around art-bros doing poppers. Nonetheless, Pander played the folk-rock they promised. I was surprised by how easily they adapted to Pattern Addict’s milieu. Last time I saw Pander, they played Lizzo and LCD Soundsystem; the glitter-caked frontman wore an unbuttoned suit and drank from a wine bottle as he slurred the lyrics to what was probably “Tongue Tied”. But that Saturday, he was significantly less unhinged as he wore a beanie and cuffed jeans. They played a few originals, one of which they claimed to be a blatant Pinegrove rip-off (it was). They played covers, as was customary, but I couldn’t recognize any of them. I guess I’m just not versed enough in folk-rock. Glitter rained from the ceiling, balloons pelted people in the face. It was the most mismatched rave I’ve ever attended. 

And then it was time for Pattern Addict. I would comment on the band’s presentation, but even in platform boots, I was too short to see over the heads in front of me. Luckily, music is not bound by height. They kicked things off in the style of Pander, with a cover. Their rendition of Blur’s “Song 2” was only recognizable by its lyrics, but I found it added to the song’s inherent irony. Other covers throughout the night included Jet’s “Are You Gonna be My Girl” and Ween’s “Ocean Man,” the latter of which my generation only knows from the credits of The Spongebob Movie. Pattern Addict is much more than covers, though, and they know that, but they just had to appease the crowd for a bit. 

The unreleased “Idlewild,” which a band member confided was a blatant Strokes rip-off (it was) was my favorite of the night. That may be the bias of my music taste talking, but it felt as if in those three minutes they were somehow able to match the unbridled energy of the room. Just for a moment, the crowd was finally all jumping up and down in unison. People chanted the names of  the band members they were friends with. The level of focus that a band deserves from their audience was finally reached. That little spark of magic, as always, was short-lived, but at least it existed. Soon we were back to the regular confusion of the night. A girl in a “Disney Dad” t-shirt attempted to crowd-surf across the low-ceilinged room. The monitors were being knocked around by the ravers. Technical difficulties occurred. That didn’t stop the band from trying to reconnect. They shifted in and out of different folk-rock subgenres: a freak-folk jam session, a track from their previous album that positions them as sons of Mumford and Sons, the familiarity of covers. “This is for dancing,” they said before playing a fully instrumental piece, as if they had to make up for the existence of their slower tracks. They ended the night strong, as “One Eye Open” is emotionally raw in a way that the audience was able to feed off of. Joe was ecstatic: this was the moment he had been waiting for all night. 

I extracted myself from the crowd’s maw once the set was over and the DJs started setting up. There was no point in me staying to watch the night devolve into yet another Saturday, at least not in the state I was in. The solo-walk home was cold and uneventful. The next day, I asked some other people what they thought of the band. Two told me they left to go to other parties before Pattern Addict even started playing. One told me she couldn't even hear the band over the cacophonous crowd. It seemed as if the only person who could give me an opinion on the music was Joe, and to be honest, if he was happy, that was the only thing that mattered.