AMERICAN AUTHORS / BILLY RAFFOUL 2.19.2023

Feb 26

Photos and Words By JULIA FINOCCHIARO

American Authors brought the energy to the hometown show of their “Best Night of My Life Tour” at Brighton Music Hall this past Sunday! The group, who originally met at Berklee College of Music, alluded to their Boston heritage throughout the night, including their apartment “around the corner” where they originally formed the band together.

The night opened up with a performance by Canadian singer-songwriter Billy Raffoul, who kept the crowd smiling with his witty jokes and fantastic acoustic set. Raffoul opened with songs like “You Be Love” and “Forever,” which he jokingly described as “depressing.” While the songs were certainly on the slower side; Billy certainly knew how to work the room, telling personal anecdotes and profusely apologizing and blaming it on "being Canadian," which garnered a good laugh from the Allston audience.

About halfway through his set, Raffoul took the time to tell a story about a recent experience he had with coffee, saying his band members found him “unrecognizable” after having some after going days without it. This segued nicely into his song “Coffee.” After a couple more songs, Billy made sure to draw attention to his merch and vinyl that was being sold at the back of the venue, strongly emphasizing the “free postcards” that seemed to be making a comeback recently. He wrapped up his set with a crowd singalong of his song “We Could Get High” amid a sea of iPhone flashlights and a quite receptive audience who had grown to love him over the course of his set.

Next up was American Authors, and to say the crowd was excited would be an understatement. Talking to some fans at the barricade before their set, it was clear some of them had been waiting for hours just to get that coveted front row spot. The band came on promptly at 9pm with an explosion of energy onto the stage opening with one of their hit singles “Believer” to get the crowd going. They followed up with another hit, “Go Big or Go Home,” which they prefaced with the instrumental intro to “I'm Shipping Up to Boston” by the Dropkick Murphys as a nod to their hometown. And if there’s one song that you can guarantee a crowd will always sing their hearts out to, it's “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. American Authors chose this as the third song in their set, truly starting out the night strong.

Throughout the night, American Authors’ crowd interaction was on a level that I personally have only seen at maybe one or two other shows that I’ve ever attended. Frontman Zac Barnett spent what seemed like half of the show standing on the front barricade to interact directly with the crowd. And when he wasn’t at the front, guitarist Zac Van Bellman and bassist Dave Rublin took turns performing solos right at the edge of the Brighton Music Hall stage. Towards the middle of the set, Barnett asked the crowd to “form a circle,” and the whole band went down into the crowd to perform an acoustic rendition of “Pocket Full of Gold.”

The band wrapped up the show with some older songs from their first two albums “Oh, What a Life” and “What We Live For” followed by a surprising cover of “good 4 u” by Olivia Rodrigo (I wasn’t aware that they actually had an official cover recording of this until after the show). They closed with what is easily their most iconic song, “Best Day of My Life,” which was absolutely fantastic played live.

Although not related to this show specifically, I do want to take a moment just to emphasize the level of involvement and interactiveness that American Authors seem to have with their fanbase. Even as I’m writing this and going through my photos from the night, I’ve already had my photos reshared by two of the band members, and when I made my first Instagram post, it felt like my finger was still on the “share” button before the band members liked the post. I know social media isn’t everything, but it's really refreshing to see a group so enthusiastic about sharing their fans’ experience. Going through each of their stories for the night, it truly seemed like all of them saw every single photo and video that fans shared. And even after the show, they stuck around at the venue to meet a very long and eager line of fans by their merch table.

If you’re an American Authors fan (or even if you’re not!), I highly recommend checking out the Best Night of My Life tour if it’s coming to a city near you.

BILLY RAFFOUL