Yellowcard, Motion City Soundtrack, Plain White T’s @ Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide 4/4/2025

‘We had no idea these thirteen songs would change our lives the way they did’ Yellowcard frontman Ryan Key bashfully says on stage in Adelaide. He’s talking about the twenty-second anniversary of Yellowcard’s debut album Ocean Avenue, a nostalgic trip down memory lane for most of the venue this Friday night.

It’s a trip Yellowcard are not doing alone, bringing with them fellow pop punks in Motion City Soundtrack and Plain White T’s and it’s the clothing outfit we start with.

It doesn’t take long for the Illinois outfit to get the crowd singing along. 1,2,3,4 is an acoustic love song while The Giving Tree shows the bands vocal versatility as the vocals switch from Tom Higgenson to Tim Lopez. You can’t be sad to the bands songs when there is a Paul Simon wistfulness to them. They finish with celebratory Hey There Delilah and a nod to Adelaide within.

For Motion City Soundtrack, it’s been quite the journey. With a couple of late trades brought into the team, any chance of that upsetting the rhythm is dispelled pretty quickly.

Justin Pierre doesn’t let his ailments impact him, if anything he uses them to his advantage. His walking cane becoming an extension of his hand expressions, his inhaler strategically used right before his haunting vocals pierce the air.

There is a lot of energy to the band, specifically keyboardist Jesse Johnson who gets about 10,000 steps in on stage. L.G. FUAD has the whole audience sing along to the bands Under Pressure moment. The band have the crowd purring and if we stopped there, everyone would be satisfied.

However, this is Yellowcard’s night. Opening with Way Away, the room lifts, drops and shudders for little over the next hour.

I missed the pop punk explosion of twenty years ago however to a crowd of similarly aged folk, this means everything to them.

With good reason too, the violin led Breathing buzzes like a bee collecting pollen, all vibrant and sweet while ‘Believe’ mixes Bluegrass with punk as the crowd lift their vocal game to match the bands.

It’s Yellowcard’s biggest ever tour of Australia, Key remarks as he openly discusses the bands spilt and reformation before appropriately launching into Fighting.

The bands grind from Florida to LA to worldwide success is talked about on stage however not from a glory seeking pulpit, rather a cautionary tale of how life balances you out.

The room looks like an ocean, coloured in sea blue, for One Year, Six Months as the crowd sing “Memories of you”.

The show leans heavily on Ocean Avenue however does sprinkle some other gems in there, including new song Back Home.

The finale features no encore, or ‘noncore’ to be exact, as they leave us with Only One and Ocean Avenue itself. I look around the venue at the crowd and people are teary eyed, singing in-situ with the band.

Key mentioned he didn’t know how these songs would change the bands lives, looking around, not just your life Ryan, not just your life.

Live Review By Iain Callum

Photo Credit: Bronwen Caple