Ratboys, Florry
First Unitarian Church
2125 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia
March 3, 2026
It’s hard to beat a sold-out double-header rock ‘n roll show at First Unitarian Church, and it’s hard to beat the combo of Florry and Ratboys, two of the best bands going right now, both at the peak of their powers so far. The Chicago-based Ratboys are on a headline tour supporting their new record Singin’ To An Empty Chair and enjoying their biggest, most receptive crowds yet: this was not their first time playing the Church, but their first time headlining. Florry formed in Philly and while its seven-ish members are spread out now, several still call Philly home.
Backstage, chatting with singer/guitarist Francie Medosch before Florry’s set, I remarked it had been at least a few years since I’ve seen Florry live, too long in my book; Medosch retorted, “We’re a lot louder now!” before showing me their shredded-to-hell guitar picks. The set that followed was indeed the loudest, rowdiest, most rambunctious I’ve ever seen Florry. Capable of slow-loping and patient twangy rock, the band nonetheless prefers to rock hard and loud, fast and loose these days, Medosch a playful presence with a permanent grin in the middle, ripping long wah-wah’d guitar solos and emphatically throwing their ragged voice around. The band is killer, with an incredible, relentless energy, a heady swirl of Jon Cox’s pedal steel, John Murray’s electric guitar, Will Henriksen’s electric fiddle up top, with Collin Dennen holding it down in a tough, filthy country-funk way on bass and Joey Sullivan – covered here recently playing with a jazz trio and Terra Cotta – playing absolutely unbeatable drums throughout, sometimes hitting as hard as he could, sometimes with a calligrapher’s light, steady touch. New, unreleased songs were debuted, one of which was a long, tempo-change-ridden barnburner with an old-time-fiddle-tune-style intro that I can’t wait for them to put out. Their latest album, Sounds Like..., made up most of the set – including an over-ten-minute extended take on “First it was a movie, then it was a book” – but I’m glad they closed with a spirited spin on The Holey Bible highlight “Drunk and High," which is like if all the pleasures of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused were condensed into an ageless two-minute rocker (with special resonance to anyone who lives by the CVS on Locust).
Ratboys, on the other hand, were the tightest, most locked-in I’ve ever seen them, triumphant and resplendent. The band’s been around for over 15 years now; I remember meeting lead singer and main songwriter Julia Steiner at a festival we were both playing in Illinois in 2016, and somehow even that early on we had a conversation about what it takes to be a musical lifer, and what it means to be the kind of person that just has to do this. All these years later, Ratboys is still here and better than ever. This version of the band was their usual core of Steiner, Dave Sagan on leader guitar, Sean Neumann on bass and backing vocals, and Marcus Nuccio on the drums, but they’ve been joined more and more on stage by Andy PK, their Chicago cohort who also performs regularly with Free Range, Options, Tobacco City and Squirrel Flower, among others. PK was a force of pure musicality, switching between pedal steel and different guitars throughout. (I thought of Billy Preston lightening up the Let It Be sessions, but if that weren’t even necessary, because everyone’s already getting along famously.)
Ratboys is possibly the easiest band in indie rock to root for: they play with palpable, enviable joy – call it joie du rock – and genuine togetherness and positivity, with tight, hooky song craft that spotlights Steiner’s bouncy melodicism while still leaving room for blazing, luminous solos from Sagan, and a rhythm section so dead-on you can take it for granted. (Nuccio is a beast on the kit, and Neumann’s the band’s secret weapon, as essential as John Stirratt.) The seventeen-song setlist kept hitting, from light to dark and back again: from effortless, bright anthems like “It’s Alive!” to chills-inducing, throat-shredding, blistering tension like “Late Night Mountains All That," which featured some of Sagan’s wildest playing. (Before their set he asked me what Philly song he should quote in the extra-long solo in the set-closing “Black Earth, WI” and I suggested the “oh man, it’s taking me over” bit in the chorus of Algernon Cadwallader’s “Some Kind of Cadwallader.” Did you notice it?) More than anything, Ratboys, on stage, are a true band’s band, the kind that extols the virtues of groups over singers-with-guns-for-hire, that renew your faith in cooperation-as-evolution and pleasure for pleasure’s sake. I watched from the side of the stage and was either boogieing or in slack-jawed befuddlement at the pure inimitable glory of the band’s togetherness. No point in being a lifer without the joie, after all.
