Macayla Cook
Our road to Greta Van Fleet on Tuesday night was not an easy one. This concert took place at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, a venue that seats 21,000 people, which GVF sold out. For those familiar with Philadelphia geography, you’ll realize that this venue is basically right across the street from Citizens Bank Park, the baseball stadium which seats nearly 43,000 and happened to be the location of P!nk’s two-night engagement on her latest tour. Yes, dear reader, your fears are founded, and the traffic was truly absurd.
Our merry bunch of four WVUD DJs set out on our epic quest at around 5:15 PM, with three hours to spare before we had to be there for press. Spoiler alert, we didn’t make it in time (otherwise, the pictures would be even better, though the seats were still crazy close). We came up to Wells Fargo at around 7:00, just to find that the turn we needed to take was closed, rerouting us for what the GPS said would be 20 minutes. An hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic later, we were sprinting to find our press passes and crossing our fingers that we would at least be able to get into the show, even if we missed the press junket down in the pit at the beginning of the set. After a few laps of the building and a very chaotic 15 minutes, we all managed to find our seats and entered while Greta Van Fleet was mid-rock-out.
What commenced was probably one of the most genuinely rock-and-roll shows to have hit stages in the last 20 years.
Simply put, GVF is the real deal. They are incredibly technically skilled, put on an amazing show, and have managed to bring such a cool vibe to their shows that we found ourselves imagining would be similar to that of the rock shows of yester-century. Their fans were all dressed up in 70s-inspired, star-studded outfits, in honor of Starcatcher and the band’s nostalgic sound. Sure, they’re not beating the sounds-like-Led-Zeppelin allegations, but why should they have to? Zeppelin’s out of the game, and Josh Kiszka is the perfect frontman to fill that void. He is absolutely magnetic on stage, simultaneously graceful and clumsy, chaotic and beautiful, adorable and confusingly, ridiculously attractive. The set included multiple costume changes, each outfit more extravagant than the last, and as if that weren’t enough, what really forces everyone to love him is that Josh is so clearly having the time of his life. He runs, jumps, skips, dances, and generally frolics about for the entire set, moving so freely that you can’t help but love him just a little bit. Even if you really want to be cynical about it, Josh is far too talented to worry about something as trivial as how normal people move.
Quite a few words come to mind when asked to describe the experience of hearing Josh Kiszka sing live. Transcendental, ethereal, angelic. At one point during the B-stage acoustic section of the set, we theorized that the gates of heaven opening up sounds like Kiszka singing “Waited All Your Life.” There’s not a flaw to be found in this man’s vocals; not one crack for the entire show, absolutely mind-blowing high notes, and he makes it all look infuriatingly easy. This is what singers like Brendon Urie wish they sounded like. He is a once-in-a-generation talent, Robert Plant incarnate even though Plant himself is still alive. There is not enough praise in the world to be properly heaped upon the vocals Josh is delivering.
He also did a shooter of Fireball in the middle of the show and still sang like an angel. Absolutely no idea how that’s possible, but he most definitely managed.
The band is also just a really talented group of individuals. Each member of the band got their own little solo during the show, and they all were extremely impressive. Guitar player Jake Kiszka plays reminiscent of the guitar gods of yore, while bassist Sam Kiszka manages to hold down some very technically difficult bass lines while making them look about as easy as scales. Drummer Daniel Wagner, the only non-Kiszka member (though he’s apparently been friends with bassist Sam since kindergarten), boasts an insanely impressive talent in his own right as well. Their solos are well-deserved so that each of them gets a chance to show off exactly how good they are without Josh onstage, as a voice like his simply cannot help but steal the show whenever he’s present. It really makes you wonder what exactly was in the water over in Frankenmuth, Michigan.
Granted, this show wasn’t perfect. It was awesome, but it was not a flawless show. The band is seemingly extremely fond of extended solos, to the point where sometimes, it does get a tad excessive. They’re really good at their instruments, but the three over-five-minute guitar solos did get a tad tedious. We were still having fun, naturally, but we did find ourselves occasionally shooting glances back and forth like okay, we get it, you can play guitar. These solos would have been forgivable, had they not taken enough time up so that GVF didn’t play the song that all four of us wanted to see really badly: “Safari Song.”
Now, we don’t need to waste time explaining why we wanted to see this song live. From the first guitar riff to the closing drum beats, “Safari Song” is awesome. It’s also one of GVF’s most popular songs; we theorized in the car that they had to play it due to its sheer popularity. And yet, the setlist remained devastatingly void of this specific banger. This was upsetting, honestly. To say we were bummed it didn’t get played is an understatement. The first words out of Ben’s mouth when we got back to the car were “they didn’t play it!”
Overall, this was a very odd but exhilarating experience. Considering it was all of our first times navigating a concert as press, we’re fairly proud of how it turned out. Sure, the traffic was hell. Sure, we didn’t hear “Safari Song.” But we did see Greta Van Fleet, in really close, free seats. We did hear “Highway Tune.” And we did have a fantastic time. It’s safe to say that WVUD will be sending DJs out on press passes more often in the future, and it’s definitely safe to say that Greta Van Fleet has made fans out of us.