Waterparks gets “Real Super Dark” on inaugural night of US Property Tour
APRIL 30TH 2023 | by EMMA SCHOORS
PHOTOS BY EMMA SCHOORS
“Why are y’all yelling at me over guitar picks?” Waterparks frontman Awsten Knight laughs, tossing another keepsake into a delightfully ravenous west-coast crowd. Tonight the curtain opens on the Property Tour at House of Blues Anaheim, hot on the heels of the release of Intellectual Property, the band’s fifth studio album. The unspoken dress code is red hair – Knight’s is blazing and freshly dyed. Those who didn’t get the memo can opt for the merch stand, where identical wigs are sold during this run of shows. My hair is red right now too, a serendipitous start to the night; it’s more of a faded crimson, whereas Knight’s, along with a slew of smiling fans, is a true fire engine red. The color encapsulates the vibrancy and melting intensity of their newest record, which covers themes of religious guilt, hypersexuality, and the ways they intersect in the painful path to self-acceptance. But for now, the task at hand is the venue’s temperature. Because that’s obviously more important.
If you’ve never been onstage, here’s a fun fact: it gets hot. Fast. Given there’s a crew dedicated to lighting your band, sweaty is a when, not an if. That’s why when someone shouts, “It’s warm,” Knight snickers, returning a simple, “I know.” He’s well-versed in stagemanship and its quirks, as are lead guitarist Geoff Wigington and drummer Otto Wood. The Houston natives have been on the move since gaining momentum with their blue-tinged debut album, Double Dare. “When we started touring at the top of 2016, that was our first time really leaving Texas,” Knight told me in a 2021 interview. Seven years and five albums later, they’re embarking on a largely sold-out world tour, enjoying their first top-10 album, and battling with Metallica for a #1 chart spot.
The set opens in accordance with the album’s tracklisting, and “ST*RFUCKER” is up to bat. Knight walks out in an orange, fur-lined puffer coat, hood up and spirits high, as the sold-out crowd breaks into a euphoric uproar. When I say sold-out, I mean sold-the-fuck-out. By the time opener Daisy Grenade’s set ends, the room is filled to the brim. It’s a sight that’s equal parts electrifying and unsurprising — the enormity of Intellectual Property deserves this kind of reaction. Waterparks deserves this kind of reaction. But physically witnessing it, seeing the looks on fans’ faces as the trio erupts into Greatest Hits heavyweight “Numb,” is when it finally hits me as real. Wigington is in near constant motion, climbing and descending the set’s white stairs, spinning at lightning speed, and singing straight to the audience at the edge of the stage, while Wood stabilizes the low end and provides grounding to Knight’s skyrocketing vocals. As for the crowd, they’re devouring the energy and giving it right back by moving. A collective catharsis is well underway, led by a frontman with stars in his eyes. Well, painted on his eyes, in a matching bright red.
“I care about tailoring the set based on how people react,” Knight told me two years ago, just ahead of the band’s A Night Out On Earth tour — their first nationwide outing since COVID. “I’ve told the guys this, too. I can play perfectly and have the best performance of my whole life, but if the crowd is a bummer, I'm going to be like, ‘That shit sucked.’ I like seeing people react, and I like hearing them.” There are moments when Knight tilts his microphone towards the crowd, reveling in their reactions to the songs, and encouraging them to sing louder or jump higher. Pre-choruses, chunks of verses, and bridges are allotted for the crowd to scream back at him, and it’s every bit intentional: “Honestly, my favorite thing about performing is to see how they perform.” Knight notes that if he were watching the show tonight, he’d be sitting dead center on the balcony. It’s a concept he floats quite a bit, watching his own band; it’s also something he’s grown disappointed in, because he can’t.
Slotted between “I Miss Having Sex But At Least I Don’t Want To Die Anymore” and “A NIGHT OUT ON EARTH,” “CLOSER” makes its non-acoustic live debut, drawing swaying phone lights and group hugs alike. Knight ends the track with a mellowed last chorus, his voice softening as the lyrics coat his acoustic guitar with a molasses-like melancholy. But as soon as he lets his guard down, humor comes reeling back in: “If you want to be in a popular band, just become a TikTok star,” Knight says between songs, “Fucking duh.” He notes that a fan is “from British,” then jokes about cobblestone and cold weather making everyone across the pond depressed. “I can’t take that right now, I need both hands,” he sighs to another fan attempting to hand him something, strumming his guitar as he continues, “Mind your own business.” The in-between chats make the evening, every time. Knight also has photographer Jawn Rocha stand on top of the steps for a few photos and a group “Happy Birthday” singalong.
Intellectual Property is the band’s deepest-reaching album cover yet. A blue poison dart frog sits alone, engulfed by a monochrome sea of bright red. “I liked the frog being blue, not only because it places me in the position of the frog, but also because that color brings me back to my naivety and most vulnerable ‘self,” Knight wrote in an Instagram post. “I learned that frogs in a biblical context are viewed as dirty, vile, and impure,” he wrote. “In other cultures and religions, they’re seen in a positive light. They’re signs of prosperity, fertility, luck, etc. On top of that, they’ve been my personal favorite animal since I was a kid.” The lead singer briefly considered putting two frogs on the cover, representing each side of the coin, but “decided that the point is to show that it’s the same thing,” the only difference being the lens you see it through. In “FUNERAL GREY,” playful flirtation anoints the scars inflicted by traditional religion's constrictive beliefs. In “FUCK ABOUT IT” and “BRAINWASHED,” sex takes a shot at spiritual healing. “Now Jesus hates my guts, it’s getting personal,” Knight sings in “A NIGHT OUT ON EARTH,” closing the record with its biggest and hardest-to-tackle theme: religious guilt.
Each song on Intellectual Property inches closer to Knight reclaiming his mental real estate, whether that be through distraction, (“2 BEST FRIENDS”) self-reflection, (“SELF-SABOTAGE”) or powering down (“RITUAL”). There are moments of unadulterated anger — percussive powerhouse Wood is all-in on “REAL SUPER DARK,” helping the record’s darkest track become one of its most energetic as well. The first time I heard the song live on the band’s 2022 run with blackbear, all frantic red lights and near-screaming lyrics, it stuck with me. It’s loud, distorted, and furiously disjointed in all the best ways. Lead single “FUNERAL GREY” is sleek in comparison. A dancing, headless figure sports a grey sweater on-screen during the show. The set design is mind-blowingly great, and Knight jokes that he’ll have to come back for a night two just to play facing towards the screens so he can watch for himself.
“To me, the first listen of anything is the most special, and you never get that experience back,” Knight wrote in a post promoting the record the night of its release. “Remember tonight, listen in the dark. Listen loud.” For every Waterparks record, there’s a few tracks I resonate especially deeply with. On Greatest Hits, “American Graffiti” and “Magnetic” tie for my number one spot, the latter because Knight opened up to me about its meaning, and its resonance in his life and career. With Intellectual Property, it’s looking like a toss up between “SELF-SABOTAGE” and “CLOSER.” They’re one in the same emotionally, though they’re considerably different on the surface. Two sides of the same coin.
This album is all about contradictions. Embracing them, or at least learning to live alongside and within them. That’s what I admire most about it.
There’s an atmospheric power and sense of pride that comes with putting on a headlining tour. From the first second of “ST*RFUCKER” to the last second of “FUNERAL GREY,” Knight, Wigington, and Wood present a record both captivating and deeply comforting. Anaheim kickstarted the Property Tour with flying colors, but the rest of the US is on deck — Waterparks is a band well worth driving, cross-country road tripping, or flying for, so when they float your way, you know what to do.
