Concert Review
Artist: Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards
Venue: The Pearl on Main
DATE: September 22, 2026
SUPPORTING: Karma and the Killjoys, Friend of a Friend
CITY: Midvale, Utah
I got an email from a publicist I’ve only recently started working with. She asked if I’d be interested in covering an up-and-coming band called Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards. I gave them a listen that same afternoon and felt that rare little jolt you get when something actually connects. Then she sent the date and the venue, and I physically winced at the screen.
The Pearl on Main. Old Midvale.
If you’ve lived in the Salt Lake Valley any length of time, you already know what that means. Midvale has long been the armpit of the entire valley — a place with a notoriously corrupt police force, a reputation that precedes it, and more than its share of bad jokes. The old downtown even doubled as a filming location for The Sandlot. I had successfully avoided the entire area since I retired from bounty hunting years ago. The thought of voluntarily driving back into that particular corner of the valley made me pause. But the neighborhood has gentrified just enough that it’s no longer the threatening hole it used to be, and the band was good enough that I decided the risk was worth it.
I pulled up to the venue and immediately started joking with the guys running the place, telling them it was a serious improvement over what the building used to be. The old playhouse still carries that wonderful rustic vibe — intimate, slightly worn in the best way, no bad seats in the house. They’d put real money and care into the new PA system, and it showed. Sitting there between the remaining dodgy head shops and tattoo parlors, The Pearl on Main actually feels like it elevates the entire block. The name fits. It’s a pearl, somehow, in a place that spent decades trying its best not to have one. The staff were proud of what they’d built, and they had every right to be.
It’s not unusual for me to walk into a show without knowing the opening bands. When you’re getting a hundred albums a week, some things just slip through. I was prepared to stand there politely and wait for the headliner. What I got instead was a genuine surprise.
Karma & the Killjoys
The openers were a New Orleans crew of musical misfits who looked like they’d been assembled from the better parts of several different weird dreams. They operate in that strange territory where emo, goth, and piano rock collide, with the piano sitting firmly at the center of everything. Guitar, bass, and drums orbit around it. Their songs drift between pirate sea shanties and fuzzy-sock domestic surrealism, walking a fine line between vaudevillian cabaret and actual rock muscle. The singer had blood coming from her eyes for most of the set. It wasn’t subtle, and it wasn’t supposed to be.
They took me by surprise in the best possible way. The music was dark, then suddenly comedic, then dark again, sometimes within the same song. They sound almost nothing like their album photos suggest, which is usually a good sign. The song that locked in hardest for me was “Heathen’s Plea” — a dark-cabaret Fleetwood Mac situation that somehow felt both theatrical and completely sincere. We only got seven songs out of them. It wasn’t enough. Go find Karma & the Killjoys. They’re doing something genuinely strange and alive.
Friend of a Friend
Next up was Friend of a Friend, one of those Chicago underground acts that keep quietly putting out work while the rest of the world looks the other way. Weird enough that you can’t stop watching them, talented enough that you eventually just mutter “goddamn” under your breath and accept it. Claire Molek handles vocals and keys. Jason Savsani plays guitar. I spent a few minutes with them in the green room before their set, then followed Claire outside while she smoked a cigarette. She pointed down at a pot plant growing out of a crack in the parking lot like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Of all places. At least nothing was going to run it over there.
I met their drummer, Jordan, who spoke with a French accent. We talked for a bit and I found out he’d previously played with M83. That detail alone made me pay closer attention.
People usually describe Friend of a Friend as folk in the direction of PJ Harvey. I saw PJ Harvey six times in seven days back in 2001, so I don’t throw that comparison around lightly. Friend of a Friend are better.
When they took the stage, Claire looked like she’d stepped out of a particularly stylish corner of the late ’60s — denim, paisley bandanna headband, zero interest in pretending to be anything other than what she was. Then she opened her mouth. Her voice is difficult to pin down cleanly, but pieces of it come straight off the Thomson Twins’ Sidekicks album, filtered through something rawer. The band builds intensity in layers. The guitar starts out like something you’d hear on an old wooden porch, then suddenly shoves you toward a cliff and pushes you off into a dreamscape that still carries residual Kate Bush vapor on the way down. I was in love by the end of the first song.
“Desire” started with a jazz feel before the guitar shifted into something that sounded like it had wandered in from the Middle East. Claire sang like Janis Joplin if Janis had come back as a banshee with better lungs and less patience. I was locked in by song two.
Then they played “Always On Time,” and the room changed. It’s their masterpiece for pure mood. Dreamy and aggressive at the same time, the kind of song that sweeps the floor out from under you the way Ofra Haza used to. You couldn’t tell whether the pads were strings or a distant choir. Jason’s harmonies turned two voices into what felt like a chorus of a thousand people just out of sight. I sat there in genuine awe that I was getting to hear this song in a renovated playhouse in Midvale, of all places. I could have lived inside that track for an hour.
They closed their set with “Stay,” which carries this heavy, dreamy Brian Eno feeling — the exact emotional weather between U2’s The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum. I had never heard this band before tonight and walked away feeling like I’d won some private lottery. They have a few Midwest dates coming up in a couple of weeks. Missing them would be a minor tragedy. Friend of a Friend should be your new favorite female-fronted indie band. You’re welcome. Ten songs still wasn’t enough. Listening to them on YouTube afterward just brings the whole feeling flooding back.
Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards
Before the headliners went on, I hung out in the smoking area with Johnny himself. We talked about where he’d been recording, his borderline fetish for engineering and knob-turning, and the strange overlapping circles of people we’d both known over the years. One band I crossed paths with at the very beginning of their life, he knew at the end of it. We’re talking more than thirty years of the same weird little music world.
Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards are a high-energy power-punk band with real wit and actual social commentary, which is rarer than it should be. When they finally took the stage, the entire temperature of the room shifted. The tangerine-dream electric folk haze of Friend of a Friend evaporated, replaced by something that demanded you either pogo or get out of the way. They carry early Green Day DNA, but they’ve mixed it with enough newer influences that it never feels like cosplay. It’s the old taste poured into a new drink.
They opened with “Stacks” and immediately delivered. The energy just kept climbing. After “Youngblood” came “Bleeding Heart,” which is this strange, grinning collision of Frank Zappa and Elton John that had me smiling behind the camera the entire time. It was pure musical mischief. “Beyond Me” slowed things down into a dreary, rainy-day piano number with clear Beatles DNA. Even as a three-piece they filled the room like a four-piece. Johnny is a multi-instrumentalist who clearly just loves writing songs, and it shows in how many different corners he can turn without the band ever losing its identity.
A few songs later, “Oh Songbird” arrived and felt like The Killers on their second album — carefree, positive, driven by genuinely fun guitar work. It’s probably the most purely enjoyable song they played all night. I had heard “Gestapo” before the show and was hoping they’d play it. They did. It’s a strange little protest number that drags the imagery of late-1930s Germany into the present without blinking: “the Gestapo don’t ask, they just round up by class.” The political intent is not subtle, and it isn’t trying to be. The entire audience ended up screaming “FUCK DONALD TRUMP” along with them. The only way they could have made the point more theatrical is if someone had pulled out a slide whistle. It was swing music throwing its most obnoxious right hook at the current moment, and it landed clean.
They followed that with “Medicine Dance,” a song about the pharmaceutical choreography so many of us are doing just to stay functional. Johnny and I had joked about ADHD before the set, so the song hit with a little extra recognition. Being medicated to feel good, to feel less sad, to not be quite so explosive — it’s the quiet dance a lot of people are doing. The band made the point without turning it into a lecture.
Later they brought Karma & the Killjoys back out for “What Is It I Came For,” and the two groups locked into a perfect collision of styles. The final chorus, with everyone in the room singing, was one of those rare moments that remind you why shared live music still matters. That energy carried straight into the closer, “One Big Beautiful Sound.” The playful sarcasm of both bands combined into something almost vaudevillian. Imagine early Violent Femmes sharing a stage with Ben Folds and you’ll be in the right neighborhood. It was beautiful musical chaos — time changes, mood swings, and pure commitment to the bit.
After three full sets and several complete emotional weather systems, they closed the night and the room felt properly spent in the best way. I left with signed CDs from all three bands. Don’t let any of their album covers fool you. If you get the chance to see Karma & the Killjoys, Friend of a Friend, or Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards, take it. If you ever catch all three on the same bill, the universe has briefly decided to be kind. Don’t waste the invitation.
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