PHOTOGRAPHY // MICHELLE HARGREAVES
STORY // ANGIE PICCIRILLO
80’s nostalgia is running rampant in our culture, along with bad fashion trends from the 90’s. However, one thing to be excited about is that the nostalgia runs hard for 80’s music. If you miss the jams of the 80’s as much as I do, you should basically listen to the newest project from ex-Panic! At The Disco bassist, Dallon Weekes.
I’ve seen I Don’t Know How But They Found Me a bunch of times now, and they are honestly the most entertaining rock band I’ve seen live in the last year. I suppose that has a lot to do with the fact that both members of the band, frontman/bassist Dallon Weekes and drummer, Ryan Seaman, are heavily seasoned musicians who know their way around a stage. I’ve seen some pretty large scale rock shows over the last year, and it’s quite refreshing to see a band that doesn’t have weird projections or pre-recorded interlude tracks between their songs. It was clear that at this show at The Fonda the band was probably rotating their set list, a thing that I’ve noticed bands have been doing lately to keep things less predictable. Sometimes you just wanna hear what real instruments sound like, and I Don’t Know How But They Found Me has plenty of that.
The show at The Fonda kicks off I Don’t Know How But They Found Me’s “Content” tour alongside The Aquabats. I can’t say that The Aquabats is the best pairing I would have chosen for the guys musically, but at least the two are on par in terms of their theatricality. And no, I Don’t Know How But They Found Me is NOT an “emo” band finding its’ way rising to fame with the so-called musical emo resurgence — they sound more like The Killers and Wham! With a splash of Frank Sinatra. And yes, the duo play bass and drums live — instead of opting for more traditional (and predictable?) instruments like guitar and keys.
My initial response to trying to describing their sound has always been “Glam Wham” since if you look up any of the origins of the band you’ll see there’s a heavy backstory based on the 1980’s (including whence their name came from). I won’t get into that now because I could write an entire thesis on that, and I just wanna bring you people the music because that’s what’s important here.
The expected group of die-hard I Don’t Know How But They Found Me fans showed up with their sparkle jackets and glitter tears — two fashion staples that Dallon seemingly never enters the stage without. They also sang along with the two current singles, “Choke” and “Modern Day Cain,” and yes, lost their minds when Dallon licked his pick and stuck it to his forehead — just as he does for every performance.
I won’t say the band is “quirky,” at least not in an Aquabats sort of way — I Don’t Know How But They Found Me is definitely some sort of intelligent younger sarcastic brother of the mega rock bands, poking fun at damn near anything they can find — yet somehow they’re perfectly satirical and somehow equally theatrical as their formerly emo older sibling. Trust me if you catch them on tour, you’ll be dying your hair blue and painting on glitter tears in no time.
See I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME on the Content Tour, get tickets at www.IDKhow.com:
April 8 — Constellation Room, Santa Ana, CA
April 9 — 191 Toole, Tucson, AZ
April 11 — The Toyota Yard, Topgolf Las Vegas, NV
April 13 — The Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco, CA
April 16 — The Crocodile, Seattle, WA
April 17 — Hawthorne Theater, Portland, OR
August 25 — Reading Festival, Reading, United Kingdom
August 26 — Leeds Festival, Leeds, United Kingdom
CONNECT WITH I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME: