Live Recap: Winnetka Bowling League at Lincoln Hall
This past Friday night, Winnetka Bowling League performed a sold out show at Lincoln Hall in Chicago, drawing in one of the largest crowds I’ve seen at this venue.
The band’s current tour is in celebration of their debut album Sha La La, which was just released on May 31st this year, so it was fitting that the setlist opened with the title track of the record. In the song, lead vocalist Matthew Koma sings about a string of past phases and simpler times that he misses like “our feed before it was political” and “the world before it was polluted with space cowboy billionaires,” so it was fitting that the stage was decked out with old box tv sets and nostalgic candy machines.
Before they got too far into the set, Koma took some time to address the crowd, saying how special Chicago is to them. “We don’t say that to all the girls, ok? It’s the first place that we came to on one of our first headlining tours, and it was our first show that we ever sold out. It made us think we should keep doing this,” he said, before dedicating the next song “On The 5” to their OG fans.
The setlist featured a lot of the material from their debut record, but similar to “On The 5,” the band sprinkled in plenty of other songs from the full WBL discography. In addition to plenty of music, the band also delivered a lot of laughs between songs, which was fitting because one of the opening acts was actually a stand up comedian named Caroline Baniewicz.
Ahead of playing “Come to the Beach” Koma told the audience about his experience with his BetterHelp therapist while he’s on the road. “We’ve been working on communication because I can communicate pretty well through songs, but in real life when it comes to confrontation I kind of take side streets, so we’ve been working on that. You wait for an opportunity in real life where you can apply what you’re talking about on BetterHelp. So a couple of weeks ago, there was this guy on Instagram who kept commenting on all our videos and kept kind of saying ‘fuck you.’ He said other stuff but every time I read it, it just said ‘fuck you.’ I thought I’m gonna come back with a quippy reply, and then I thought about my BetterHelp guy and how he wants me to be more direct. So Sam [Beresford] and I were driving to the airport and Sam found his home address and his phone number, and I said I’m just gonna call him and be like why ‘fuck you’? Then I fell back into the old habit and I signed him up for the US Army. Anyways, I think there’s a misconception that if you go to therapy, you have to stop being an asshole and I’m just here to say you can still be a piece of shit. That has absolutely nothing to do with this next song.”
The show continued with more great tunes and quips from Koma, including another story about a recent trip to CVS ahead of playing their song by the same name. After both of those stories, I definitely think that BetterHelp and CVS should sponsor the next WBL tour!
As the show began to wind down, the band played one of their newer singles called “This is Life,” which was a collaboration with Medium Build and Dawes that they released only a few weeks after Sha La La came out. Koma continues to be one of my favorite lyricists and the band flawlessly brought Winnetka Bowling League’s songs to life during the show at Lincoln Hall, so I hope they continue to consistently deliver new material and bring it to the stage.
If you get a chance to see the tour, don’t miss it. You can check out photos of the Chicago gig below, and see where you can catch the tour next here.
