Our Recap Of (Most Of) Crush's Concert At The Merch On Saturday Night!

You may recall that newer Sault Michigan hard rock trio Crush made their debut at The Merchants Bar this past Saturday night, and you can now see the vast majority of their three-sets-long concert via live-streamed videos on their Facebook page! Well, you can watch them "for now", as current Facebook limitations on live-streamed videos mean that these will no longer be playable after a month unless Crush opts to convert them into regular videos or re-upload them. Basically, I'd better get to them now while there's time, and if you want to see the three videos, assuming the guys don't make them permanent, you have until around May 11th! Unfortunately, the filmer recording the concert shot all three sets vertically, but they did try to frame the whole band within the portrait orientation. Just as a reminder, Crush is the Tarnished spinoff band that debuted last summer.

In the first set video (which is embedded below), you can see Alex, Josh, and Iggy leading off with a fast and rocked up cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary", before tackling "SDR&R", which is a holdover from Tarnished's days as an original band, specifically a 2021 studio single of theirs. Of note, while singer/drummer Alex Traynor sang lead on the Tarnished version, guitarist Josh Fair (a.k.a. Josh Tyler) handled lead vocals on Saturday night, and he didn't do a bad job, aided by bassist Isaac "Iggy" Royer's gruff backing vocals! Crush's own original "Too Close" (which has been teased on social media before) follows, and here, Iggy sings lead. Alex returns to lead vocals for a cover of AC/DC's "Big Balls", before the guys play a brand new original named "Satisfied" with Josh singing. Iggy takes over vocals for their punky original "Hey You", which opened their battle-winning set last year.

Their next song is actually a cover of the fast rocking outro of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" (in response to a fan yelling the title out; kudos for actually learning part of it!), before Alex sings his first original song of the night, "No Way". Like with "Too Close", the studio version of this song has been sampled as background music in some of Crush's prior social media videos. The first set closes with a hard rock cover of (I'm serious) Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!", also with Alex on vocals. There's already a lot to take in there, but how about their set #2 live-stream video? Henceforth, all songs have Alex on lead vocals unless otherwise stated. In the 10:00 hour at The Merch, their set began with a cover of The Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz", followed by their original "Capitol Gain" (also played at last summer's battle of the bands in Brimley), which Josh and Iggy roughly share vocal duties on. 

The next song (with Josh on lead vocals) wasn't introduced by name, but it has a Motley Crue-esque swagger, and it may be named "Fuck It" based on the chorus. Next is "Intoxicated" (featuring Iggy on lead vocals), which is another Tarnished original that Crush have taken on, and while that band never recorded it as a studio single, you can see Alex and Josh play it in that band in early 2024 at this link. Crush have teased their studio version in social media teasers as well, including this "gross" video starring Iggy to promote the Merch concert. Iggy remains the lead singer for their next song, a cover of Kiss' "Rock & Roll All Nite", and they wrapped up set #2 with one more Kiss cover, this time "Detroit Rock City". Logging and writing about what happened in an hour's worth of live-streamed concert video has dragged this post out really well, so I'll save set #3 for an upcoming post.

Just based on the first two sets, Crush have a good thing going, and it is encouraging to see Josh and Iggy get so many opportunities at the mic! Things aren't too far removed from Tarnished sonically, but with a looser and heavier form factor, and some cover choices of varying levels of predictability for a band of their style. The vertical camera angle, hazy lighting, and Alex often being obscured behind Josh all aren't ideal for home viewers, and I do wish that the attendees at The Merch were more vocal between songs, but there's good tunes here, so check out the first two sets above & below, and we'll look at the third set very soon! Thanks everyone!