This is a Stick Up…
w/ Rematch, Public Works, Hit the Lights, Major League
There are shows you attend and shows you feel in your chest for days after. The Foundry in Philadelphia hosted the latter on a night when Hit the Lights and Major League returned, not just to perform but to reckon with the records that defined them. Two bands and two album anniversaries drew a room full of people who have been carrying these songs with them for years.
Rematch opened the evening and set an appropriately urgent tone. Public Works followed and warmed the room to a near-boil before the headliners took over. By the time Hit the Lights stepped on stage, the crowd was primed.
Playing through This is a Stick Up…don’t Make it a Murder in its entirety, Hit the Lights delivered a masterclass in why pop-punk endures. The Foundry is an intimate space and that intimacy worked in the band’s favor, the electricity was impossible to ignore. Crowd surfers moved non-stop. Mini mosh pits broke out in corners where you wouldn’t have expected them. For a venue with little history of either it was a remarkable transformation and one entirely authored by the band’s relentless energy.
The set’s defining moment had nothing to do with the stage production. It came when the band’s loved ones and the opening acts gathered at the sides of the stage and rocked out alongside them. It was unscripted and genuine, a quiet testament to how deeply Hit the Lights has shaped the lives of the people around them and the genre they’ve helped carry.
Major League closed out the night with their anniversary run through The Truth is… and nine years of absence made the performance feel earned in a way that a regular tour date simply cannot replicate. You could see the weight of the return on them and the relief of it too. This was not a band going through the motions. This was a band remembering exactly why they started.
The Foundry gave both bands something a larger venue never could: closeness. Every shout-along and every body that went over the barrier and every tearful face in the crowd landed with full force. Album anniversaries can sometimes feel like nostalgia exercises. This one felt like a reunion with something that never really left.
Photography by Wes Shepherd
