I don’t think I need to say it at this point, but I absolutely love New New Girlfriend. They are without a doubt my favorite band. So when they told us that they’d be playing two full-band shows in a row (sorry everyone who doesn’t live in Los Angeles) I knew my weekend plans were set. And boy they did not disappoint.

The first show was at a small venue in Hollywood called The Hotel Café. There was not a lot of room on the stage for Kylen Deporter and Griffin Burns to move around and dance, but they still made it work. Sweaty, intimate shows are personally my favorite kind, and this was no different. They were laughing and joking around with the small crowd, and it was just the best kind of energy.

This show was the full-band debut of Hidden, a song that holds a lot of meaning, and soft spot in my heart. It’s beautiful, and it’s haunting. With a bit slower of a tempo, it’s the perfect mid-set slowdown, to ease us into the latter half.

At the show, they also debuted a new cover, one that hasn’t even made it onto Spotify (yet…we’re still not-so-patiently waiting!) A pop-punk rendition of What Was I Made For from the Barbie movie. It’s high energy, it’s existential, and it’s just fun. And that’s really what New New Girlfriend songs are all about. It doesn’t matter how heart-wrenching the lyrics are, the energy and the delivery is just fun.

I have been to many, many concerts in my time, and I would rank the Hotel Cafe show as my favorite. There’s just something about the way that Kylen and Griffin can work a crowd. It’s electrifying. I don’t know if I’ve ever danced that hard before.

And then I got to do it all over again the next day. Anime Impulse in Anaheim was not as grand as their San Diego show. The stage was in the middle of the Expo hall, so the lighting wasn’t as fun. But the full-band more than made up for it. And this stage was huge which meant that the guys could dance around to their heart’s content.

It was also clear that they were just enjoying themselves. They were interacting with the crowd, talking, laughing. And while they were singing they kept looking over at us and you could just sense that everything felt right. They were having fun, we were having fun. A perfect storm.

If there’s two things that I know about this band, it’s that they know how to put on a show, and that they have incredibly dedicated fans. That’s one thing about this whole mini tour that I haven’t mentioned yet. My two best friends, that I met through New New Girlfriend, flew down so that we could experience the concerts together. This was the first time that we all got to spend time together in person. And that’s the real magic of New New Girlfriend. These two guys started a band, opened a Patreon (and a discord server) and have cultivated a following of some of the best people that I’ve ever met.

The shows still would have been amazing if I had seen them alone. But the fact that I got to look over and see my friends enjoying them as well , just made the whole thing even better. It also meant that we got to lovingly heckle them while they were performing. Whether that was begging for them to play That’s Why I, which was one of the songs that got cut, or insisting that Cardigan is actually called Cardigan of a Broken Heart (an inside joke from their Patron-only Discord Server…you had to be there). It was clear that they were enjoying seeing us enjoy ourselves.

I’m not sure anything will top this weekend for me. Two shows full of my favorite music with my favorite people. A weekend full of laughter, singing and so much fun. Thank you New New Girlfriend and I can’t wait for the next show.