Photography by Gabriela Chastain
By Gabriela Chastain
As soon as you walk into Port City Music Hall, you see a set of couches and comfy chairs that you'd find in most of your friends basements. When you get closer to the stage, you notice this royal patterned wallpaper that plasters the right side of the venue. It feels like home, and the blue mood lighting flooded the room like moonlight.
The opener, Worlds Greatest Dad, had everybody dancing as soon as they played their first note.
The second band Free Throw really introduced and opened up the pit. I swear watching people push and run around in the open and vast circle was like watching laundry spin. Amazing performances and fantastic energy from both of these bands.
The house music went back up and people pushed even closer to the stage.
Everyone's ready for Tiny Moving Parts. As I looked around I noticed that almost everyone was wearing either tie dye or flannel, accompanied with ripped jeans and beat up Vans to match. It felt like I was in a room with my friends.
As the blue light that flooded the stage started to go up, the neon sign that said "The Parts" turned on, and Dylan walked out. He was alone for the first minute while playing the melodic intro to "For The Sake Of Brevity." Immediately everyone started to sing along and sway. Pretty quickly, the rest of the band members joined him on stage and the energy went right back up.
There was no lull at any point, we were all feeding off the energy that the band gave us, and the band was feeding off of our energy as well. These three sweethearts continued to jump around the stage, and even into the crowd. I truly have never seen any other band play a guitar solo in the middle of a mosh pit. Being front row at this venue allowed me to truly experience all of what this show had to offer. For starters, some guy used both mine and his girlfriend's shoulder to launch from the stage into the pit.
The crowd went absolutely wild during their song "Fish Bowl," which was when people were literally throwing and pulling eachother around the pit.
As I stepped to the side to avoid this whirlwind, I saw this couple behind me swing dancing along to "Caution." As the show came to a close and the band walked off the stage, the crowd immediately started chanting "ONE MORE SONG!" A minute later, the three band members walked backed on the stage to play their home hitting and chilling encore song, "Dakota."
Tiny Moving Parts could be best described as the sweet lovechild of La Dispute and American Football.
The band categorized as "emo revival" combines math rock and spoken word with post hardcore energy. For someone who is unfamiliar with this band, I would definitely go to one of their shows again. The smile that lit up Dylan's face stayed for pretty much the entire show.
I would personally like to say thank you to Kristi, who held her arm out to help stop the crowd continuously ramming into me while I was shooting; and to Nate who let me test out one of his lenses.
Thank you to Worlds Greatest Dad, Free Throw, and Tiny Moving Parts for coming all the way to Portland, Maine. We would love to have you all back!
