History repeats itself. It always happens. Bands and musical styles come and go, but one thing remains: rock and roll. Greta Van Fleet is out there proving that rock is very much not dead, no matter how many times Gene Simmons wants to say it is. The trio of brothers (Josh, Sam, & Jake Kiska) and Danny Wagner took their act on the road to The Forum in Los Angeles, CA, for a headlining spot. They just recently released their fourth studio album Starcatcher, which combines that previous Led Zeppelin-stylings with some newfound space rock, folk, and even a bit harder rock edge. It’s a magnificent album if you haven’t listened to it yet.

If you plan on seeing Greta Van Fleet on this tour, I’d heavily recommend listening to it repeatedly because they meant it when they labeled this the Starcatcher World Tour. They play a whole nine songs off the new album, almost every track on this tour. If you don’t want to be spoiled on exactly what songs they’re going to play, don’t read on. But here’s the setlist, thanks to our friends at Setlist.fm.

The one huge issue this setlist doesn’t cover was all of the show’s guitar solos. Most of the tracks on Starcatcher have some good to great guitar solos, but they’re contained. They don’t run on. During the show, there were more than several points when you could practically hear audience members going “PLEASE DON’T LEAVE!” to Josh Kiszka because it meant we had to have another five to ten-minute guitar solo from guitarist Jake Kiszka.

His solos at points were virtuosic, but at other points, it seemed like he was running out of notes to play and had to resort to noodling around to fill the time. It exacerbated the problem that some fans might have with this tour, that they’re not playing some of the hits that people want to hear. I’m a big fan of bands taking swings during live shows, but when the time is filled up with twenty minutes of solo’ing, you probably could have squeezed in some time for “Highway Tune”, “Safari Song”, and other hits from previous albums.

Guitar solos are rock and roll, that’s what it’s all about, but there’s a time and a place, and sometimes things need to get reigned in a bit. Danny Wagner’s drum solo in the middle of the set was the only extended solo that was absolutely necessary. That led to one of the coolest moments of the entire show.

While Danny was thundering away on the drums, the rest of the band was secretly heading out to a stage in the middle of the floor for an acoustic set. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of acoustic sets. They feel a bit pretentious. We’re here for rock and roll and loud guitars. However, this one was different. It made an arena show filled with thousands of people feel like an intimate experience. They jammed through some covers and finished up with “Black Smoke Rising”. It was a rousing performance where everyone in the audience seemed to know the words and were belting along. I’ve only seen a couple of shows where this was the case: Guns N’ Roses with ‘Sweet Child ‘O Mine’ and Journey with ‘Don’t Stop Believing’.

Greta Van Fleet took some swings with this setlist and show. While there were low points, the high points far outweighed them. The band plays with the energy and exuberance of much older and wiser people than the young group. They know exactly who they are. Sure, they’re borrowing and shaping things and elements from all kinds of other bands, but guess who else did that? Everyone else. This time around, they’re some of the people keeping rock and roll in the mainstream when so many others are going by the wayside.

I’d say that their choices with the setlist, in particular, pay off for the most part. Starcatcher is a fantastic album. It deserves to be heard mostly in its entirety (they skipped out on the 1:17-long ‘Runway Blues’). They put on a throwback-type show, complete with warts and all. If you love rock and roll, you owe it to yourself to go out and see Greta Van Fleet.

You can grab tickets to the remaining dates on the Starcatcher World Tour from their website here.

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