The Story So Far’s “I Want to Disappear…” Tour at the Hollywood Palladium

December 12th, 2024 – Los Angeles

On Thursday night, thousands filled the atrium of the Hollywood Palladium for The Story So Far, a hardcore-influenced pop-punk act founded out of California’s Bay Area seventeen years ago. As veterans of the music scene, they were evidently still going strong, completely selling out the iconic venue for their newest album I Want to Disappear… that was released this June via Pure Noise Records.

Opening first was Koyo, a New York-based melodic hardcore outfit whose hard-hitting music sent fans crowd-surfing over the barricade and running around in circle pits not too long after doors opened. Constantly moving across the stage, they gave a brief, frantic teaser of their discography including their most recent single “Mile A Minute” and their biggest anthemic hit “Moriches.”

Photography by Carissa Leong (IG @carissalphoto.cr2)

Grunge-infused rock band Superheaven opened last. Bathed in dark lighting and heavily obscured by an amped-up fog machine, Superheaven set a different tone to the rest of the night, only lackluster in that their mellowed-down energy was caught between two intense performing acts. They performed a concise setlist of their greatest hits, including “Youngest Daughter”, which received a fairly recently viral TikTok-driven resurgence. They also introduced “Long Gone” and “Numb To What Is Real” as their first singles in nearly ten years, which are precursors to an upcoming album.

Photography by Carissa Leong (IG @carissalphoto.cr2)

The Story So Far, currently consisting of Parker Cannon (vocals), Kevin Geyer (lead guitar, keys), Ryan Torf (drums, rhythm guitar, keys) and Will Levy (guitars), finally took the stage. Though the frontman’s stage presence has been ‘meme-d’ within the community, the performance was not nearly as static as expected–and though they were less energetic and interactive than Koyo, it was compensated for by the sheer energy and participation of the crowd. Were it not such a large venue with heavy security, it was clear that the fans would be right up there with the band before stage-diving.

Photography by Carissa Leong (IG @carissalphoto.cr2)

The setlist did well to mix both new and old, and it said a lot that the crowd went off to the new singles “Big Blind” and “Letterman” almost as hard as they did for the older, well-loved tracks like “Roam” and “Things I Can’t Change.” There was also plenty of excitement for their more experimental 2018 album Proper Dose, with a good amount of participation for the catchy “Out of It” as well as the poppier “Upside Down.” Over the course of the setlist, which spanned over twenty songs, it was hard to find any specific point where the energy level dropped significantly, even to the occasional mellower track.

One of the new standout tracks, both in the studio album I Want To Disappear… and live, was “White Shores” which was about Cannon’s grief from losing his father. Though much of their discography already skewed toward reflective and melancholic, hearing the lyrics “and when I leave, I’d call you / you’d tell me about all the things that I don’t understand / and now the absent silence is deafening / you’re not there to pull me back down from the ledge” in-person, backed by the only acoustic guitar performance that night, was something bittersweet and special.

Conclusively, the show and setlist was almost equal parts paying homage to The Story So Far’s past as it was honoring who they would be moving forward. And, no matter what the future holds for them, one thing remains clear–as long as it has Cannon’s signature piercing vocals and the urgent drums and guitar-work backing it, their fans will happily follow them in any direction that they go, in the same way that it’s been like for well over a decade.