After announcing that they were reuniting in 2022 and releasing the new album Hard Light at the tail end of 2023, Drop Nineteens have now officially played their first show in 30 years.
The Boston shoegaze band made their grand return at the Atlantis in Washington, DC on Wednesday, April 17. They debuted a bunch of songs from Hard Light, covered Lana Del Rey's "White Dress" and Madonna's "Angel," and closed the set by performing their 1992 song "Kick the Tragedy" live for the first time ever.
Check out some fan-shot footage from their comeback show below.
Here's the full setlist from the concert:
“Delaware”
“Gal” (Live debut)
“Mayfield”
“Winona”
“Shannon Waves” (Live debut)
“The Price Was High” (Live debut)
“Nausea”
“Ease It Halen” (Live debut)
“My Aquarium (Second Time Around)”
“A Hitch” (Live debut)
“White Dress” (Lana Del Rey cover)
“Tarantula” (Live debut)
“Scapa Flow” (Live debut)
“Angel” (Madonna cover)
“Kick The Tragedy” (Live debut)
Drop Nineteens were originally supposed to embark on a comeback tour in support of the new album last October, but those dates ended up getting pushed until this spring.
"A constellation of personal and practical factors is making it impossible for us to put on the show we intend to at the time we expected this Fall," the band announced on social media in September. "We’re rescheduling the October dates to April 2024 and will be adding our first festival appearance since Reading 1993."
"All current ticket holders will be honored for these new dates and these new dates are on sale now with all refund requests being made at your original point of purchase. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes our fans, particularly those of you who planned on traveling to see the shows in October. Thank you for hanging in there as we make our way to you (note: we’ve heard your requests from other cities, countries, and hemispheres, and we are working on ways to get to you as well)."
Here are the rescheduled dates for the reunion tour.
APRIL
April 18 – Philadelphia, PA, Union Transfer
April 19 – Boston, MA, The Paradise *
April 20 – Brooklyn, NY, Warsaw *
April 24 – Oakland, CA, The New Parish ^
April 25 – Los Angeles, CA, The Belasco ^
* with Greg Mendez
^ with Winter
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Drop Nineteens' original run was a five-year whirlwind from 1990-1995. They formed as Boston University students, released two albums and two EPs, and then called it a day, but the cult surrounding them has only grown in the intervening decades.
"It wasn't for years and years that people were knocking down my door to make an album," frontman Greg Ackell told Q in an interview last year. "It would come up periodically in my life. I just knew for a fact that I just didn't want to do it. And not only did I not want to, I knew I was never going to. I was convinced of this more than anything in my life."
"What can I say? I was wrong about that," he continued. "I was on the phone with a friend who raised the subject, and for the first time ever it got me thinking. The thing that was different, though, was that it was the first time that I actually was curious what a Drop Nineteens song would sound like. That was the start of it."
"We were asked recently 'Why didn't you get together before?' And Paula [Kelley, vocalist/guitarist] said 'Why would we have?' And I love that answer. Like, for what reason? And so why do we get together now? Because it was time. I wanted to hear it."
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