live @ 930 Club, 9.19.2002
Chicago’s Mest is one of a plethora of up-and-coming bands --- Good Charlotte, Unwritten Law, Goldfinger, Sum 41 notable among them --- that are invigorating the pop-punk form, and on it’s first-ever headlining tour, the quartet drew a healthy crowd to the 930 Club Thursday night.
Led by singer-guitarist Tony Lovato, whose tattoos and platinum blonde dye job brought him across like a combination of Billy Idol and Billie Joe Armstrong, Mest delivered a snappy performance that neatly captured the crisp sound of their recordings. Mest’s punk stance is more playful than insurrectionary, and the middle class teens that constituted the majority of the audience bounced, pogo-ed and crowd surfed like they were celebrating the last day of school. For their part, the band provided a consistent, peppery beat, delivering songs like “Hotel Room”, “Misunderstood” and “Long Days, Long Nights” with the assurance of a band who has mastered the verse-chorus-bridge punk-pop recipe.
In what is becoming an increasingly popular strategy, Mest allowed the fans to determine the set list for shows on this tour, based on participation through the band’s official website. The resulting script was a judicious survey of the group’s recorded output, not surprisingly weighted towards faster material and including what many Mest fans probably consider a golden oldie, a version of the 1982 Modern English hit “I Melt With You”. That song, like all the others, was delivered with an exuberance that was refreshing.
Washington Post, 2002
