Streetlight Manifesto headlined their second annual Long Summer Night hometown show at the Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park on Saturday. The show was filled with deep cuts, a string quartet, and a ton of local music.
Beat Stu started the show early in the Indoor Pony, performing for over an hour around the time doors opened. The local ska-punk band have released two EPs since their start around 2022. They also played the same slot in 2023.
At the outdoor show, another local Jersey band, Mercy Union, got things going for the Streetlight crowd. The band put together a show with their hits like 1988 and Evergreen during their 30-minute set.
Mercy Union features a sound similar to The Gaslight Anthem, with heavy influences by bansd like Rancid and The Bouncing Souls. During their set, you can hear Jared Hart drop several Rancid song titles in the lyrics, from tracks like ‘As Wicked’ and ‘Avenues & Alleyways’.
The main act, Streetlight Manifesto came on after not too long of a wait. At 8:35, the Jersey ska-punk group hit the stage to ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns N’ Roses. It was their first show since their other hometown annual series at Starland Ballroom in December.
Though fans were hoping for new music to be played, as was at Starland in 2022, that was not the case. However, attendees got some very special treats throughout the show.
After two of their hits, ‘Watch It Crash’ and ‘The Three of Us’, Tomas Kalnoky introduced the next track, ‘Ungrateful,’ which had not been played since 2013, the only time it was every performed previously.
As they hadn’t played that track in over ten years, Kalnoky mentioned that he struggled to remember the lyrics, and that “I reserve to change the lyrics at any time, so it’s not me f–ing up, it’s actually you f–ing up.”
Other deep cuts included ‘One Foot on the Gas, One Foot in the Grave’ which hadn’t been performed since 2017, and ‘They Broke Him Down’ which wasn’t played since 2013.
On top of the deep cuts, Streetlight also introduced Atlys to the stage, a string quartet who covered ‘A Better Place, a Better Time’, which caught Streetlight’s attention. Along with that track, they also performed ‘A Moment of Silence’, ‘A Moment of Violence’, ‘With Any Sort of Certainty’, and ‘Here’s to Life’ with Atlys, which also ended the set.
The show wasn’t quite over yet, however, as they came out for two more tracks. ‘The Big Sleep’, which featured bananas crowdsurfing in the crowd, and the closing song, ‘Somewhere in the Between’, in true Streetlight fashion.
The show ended early at 10:15 pm, but still featured a full hour and 40 minutes of music, with essentially no breaks. The show is the first of ‘The Myth of Monsters’ tour, which will be heading out to Las Vegas next week for the “real” start. It returns to Brooklyn in December, and it is likely that they will announce a Starland Ballroom show at the end of the year.
Tug of War Machine closed out the night inside the Stone Pony for the official aftershow, so it was a day of all local Garden State bands. After the show, Kalnoky mentioned that they will be returning to the Stone Pony Summer Stage next year.
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