Worrywart, Trudy, Sandcastle, In Lieu of Roses
Abyssinia
229 S 45th St.
Philadelphia
May 18, 2026
“We drove 7,000 miles to be here with you! Thank you for being here with us!” singer/guitarist Ryley Epp shouted, just before worrywart launched into a knotty, shouty rocker with enough twists and turns to give the Mel Bay transcription department a panic attack. It’s a long way to Vancouver, British Columbia - three thousand miles and at least two days of non-stop driving, in fact; now, imagine you’re a band in 2026. It’s harder (and more expensive) than ever to cross the border and acquire the necessary credentials to travel and work here or there; the usual flow of artists between the states and Canada – especially queer and gender-nonconforming artists – has been complicated and gummed up under this current heinous administration. Which is all to say that there’s ever-more cause to celebrate and tip the hat to bands that make it work, because they’re working their asses off to make it happen. Sometimes, like in the case of Vancouver’s “anxiety rock” band worrywart, that amounts to seven – seven! – weeks of touring across North America and all over the states, often playing unconventional or even unreceptive rooms and performing short sets to accommodate sound curfews and four-band bills; all these miles and hours to play for something like twenty minutes. That’s above-and-beyond admirable dedication.
And the band made it count, playing a noisy, raucous set with bratty, technicolor energy to burn and a special, singleminded lack of fucks given: intentionally fucking with each other, tossing instrument cables so they’d coil where they shouldn’t, tackling that upstairs Abyssinia room like it was a stage ten times bigger. In terms of sheer irrepressible fun it was easy to love – they were smiling and clearly enjoying themselves, goofy, emphatic, throwing shapes and making elastic, silly-putty faces as they played – and it’s been a minute since I’ve heard guitars with such gnarly, growling distortion and musical feedback (adding the Fender Shields Blender fuzz pedal to my wishlist) in such a small space, my head buzzing like I’d crawled inside the speaker cabinet. All with walloping, pummeling bass and drums and the kind of catchy, anthemic vocals I’ve come to expect from, well, basically all Canadian art rock.
worrywart’s been a band for four years and this is their first U.S. tour, and likely last for a long time because those pesky work visas are expiring; writing this, I feel a particular urge to urge you to tell your friends in other cities to check them out and make them feel welcome! And that goes for dope Canadian bands in general. (Shout out to the great Eliza Niemi, returning soon to Philly at Johnny Brenda’s on June 8… see you there?) At the end of the day, there’s a broad, global community out there of artists and DIY people with shared values and shared visions of what the world could be, and if things keep going the way they’re going, those communities will only be more crucial going forward, across any and all borders.
