Byline: Emily Hernandez and Adam Ponce
The crowd was a mass of twenty-somethings bobbing their heads, jumping up and down like pogo sticks with hair flying in every direction. On stage, San Diego natives Almost Monday played their new unreleased single “Cough Drops.”
Younger attendees were pressed up close to the front of the stage, while others lingered around the outskirts of the Constellation Room, enjoying the show from a comfortable distance.
The crowd mirrored lead singer Dawson Daugherty’s fashion statement; sunglasses, as if it were an unspoken rule. At one point Daugherty outstretched his hand from the stage to borrow a pair of small plastic white sunglasses from someone he noticed in the crowd, forming a one on one connection.
Daugherty and his band mates are hoping to make more memories with fans on their first West Coast tour, which started Feb. 24 in Santa Ana.
“It’s like the best feeling in the world when you see people connecting to something you’ve made,” Daugherty said before the show, “I think for me and the boys as well, like I don’t know just bringing joy to people.”
The intimate venue transformed into a dance floor once the song “Cool Enough” began to play. With a similar groovy bassline to that of Arctic Monkeys “Teddy Picker,” the crowd began to sway, and rock to the sing-along-able “na na nas.” Daugherty began to dance feverishly as he belted out the lyrics: Ooooo somebody tell me, am I cool enough?
The trio formed in 2020, playing live gigs from the back of a surf shop. By October of that year, they released a debut EP Don’t Say You’re Ordinary on Hollywood Records. A sophomore EP “Til the End of Time” was released on July 9, 2021.
“The surf shop was basically an 80 cap room, like we were crammed in there. It was cool to see people just like start showing up there,” says bassist Luke Fabry. “I don’t know, it’s cool to see something build, you know.”
Since their humble coastal beginnings, their music has gained just under half a million monthly listeners on Spotify and an overall 30 million streams across Tik Tok, Apple Music, and YouTube. Some of Almost Monday’s most popular songs include “Parking Lot View,” with over 5 million streams, and their song “Broken People” with over 9 million streams on Spotify.
Almost Monday brings melodic vocals, eclectic dance jams, and an energetic stage presence. They craft their sound through experimentation with an emphasis on evolving as a band.
“It’s almost like you don’t find a sound, but like you stumble upon it and it just happens to be what it is,” guitarist Cole Clisby said.
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