Live Review: THE DRIVER ERA in Brussels

Upon our arrival at the venue, there were rows and rows of fans queued up to enter the historically rich and picturesque venue La Madeleine, located in Brussels, Belgium. Some had been waiting since dawn to catch a glimpse of THE DRIVER ERA. Before the main act started, we were blessed with the presence of not one, but two support acts from California.

Your Favorite Color, consisting of lead singer Matt Warren, drummer Matthew Fosmire, guitarist David Silveria, bassist Cameron Pearson, and keys Nicky Neighbors, introduced us to their indie rock sound with their first song of the evening ‘What I Need’. Their name derives from a song demo called ‘Your Favorite Color Is Red and Mine Is Blue’, which “resembles the acceptance of difference between two people or two things and the frustration that comes with achieving this mindset”. Matt is an energetic performer that likes to show his own dance moves while singing and the crowd follows along to their fun and electric songs, greatly entertaining requests by the band to wave their arms and jump around. During their third song of the night, ‘Stained’, Matt jumped onto the barricade to be closer to the crowd, and the fans gleefully watched in awe.

Halfway through their set, Matt took a moment to let the crowd know how appreciative they are to THE DRIVER ERA and their fans to be on their first ever tour, also mentioning that their very first debut album For You came out on September 5th. Their song ‘Time Only Stops When You Come Around’ lit up the venue with flashlights as the crowd was swept up in a moment of movie romantics during this rock ballad. Closing their set with the song ‘Forget The Summer’, Matt took one last moment to connect with the crowd on the barricade. The fans once again bounced with joy, let loose completely as they said their final goodbyes to the band.

The second band of the evening, almost monday, opened with their song ‘is it too late?’ from their new debut album DIVE that came out on September 25th. The band, consisting of leadsinger Dawson Daugherty, guitarist Cole Clisby, and bassist Luke Fabry, immediately swept the crowd off of their feet with their indie pop rock sound. The 26 year old’s energetic and up-beat songs had not only the crowd, but also lead singer Dawson, dancing the night away. From his karate chops, crazy jumps and swift feet, to his sassy poses, funny faces and crowd interactions. It’s safe to say Dawson knows how to entertain a crowd. Before starting their song ‘tidal wave’ he teaches the crowd to sing along with the song.

The band released their debut EP don’t say you’re ordinary in 2020 and was scheduled to play the ‘BottleRock Napa Valley festival’, but that event was sadly cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. It didn’t stop them from releasing new music though, as in 2021 they came out with their second EP til the end of time. 2022 was also a great musical year for the band, as they released three singles that year, with the single ‘sunburn’ blowing up on social media platform TikTok. The song is the band’s most popular song with 33 million streams on Spotify alone. The popularity of the song was also evident in the crowd as they started singing and clapping along and held on to this energy all through their song ‘she likes sports’. The band closed their set with the song ‘life goes bye’. Luckily, the wait to see them again is not long, as Dawson tells us they’ll be “coming back next year on our headline tour”.

When the crowd is properly warmed up, it’s finally time for THE DRIVER ERA. The shows starts with Rocky and Ross Lynch walking down the stairs onto the stage and giving eachother a hug and a handshaking, while starting their song ‘OMG Plz Don’t Come Around’, followed by ‘Feel You Now’. Both are songs from their albums X and Girlfriend, which when combined make up the name of their current ‘X Girlfriend tour’. The next songs ‘Keep You Up At Night’ and ‘Don’t Walk Away’ are from their fourth studio album Obsession, which is set to release on February 14th, 2025.

By the time the remix of songs ‘Low’ and ‘Nobody Knows’ comes on, the crowd is fully settled in, shouting along to the songs and dancing their heads off. As a little break in between their high energy songs they instead play an acoustic version of the song ‘Heart Of Mine’, lead by Garrison Jones on Piano, Ross on lead vocals, the rest of the band on backing vocals, and drum guidance by the end of the song by Dave Briggs. The band leaves the stage for a few minutes in between their songs, and the crowd takes these moments to cheer soccer chants and cheer for band member Rocky, a beautiful moment of love and appreciation for the talented guitarist, who fans have noticed is often left forgotten by other fans who come to see his brother Ross and his bare abs in all their glory.

As the band joins us on stage again, the crowd cheers as Ross has indeed taken his shirt off for the remainder of the show. The intro to a fan favourite song ‘Fantasy’ starts playing and the venue lights up with all the colours of the rainbow illuminating the band. As they come to the end of song ‘Malibu’ of their third studio album Summer Mixtape, they smoothly transition into a mashup of ‘Need You Tonight’ by INXS and Santana’s ‘Maria Maria’. The crowd once again dancing and singing loudly got even louder, when their last song before the encore, ‘Preacher Man’ started to play. This song was the first ever release of the band in 2018, after the disbanding of their previous group R5, which included four Lynch family members and their friend Ellington Ratliff.

For the encore, Ross performed the solo song ‘On My Own’ from the Disney Channel Original movie ‘Teen Beach Movie’. The last song of the evening and number one fan favourite ‘A Kiss’ featured Ross sporting heart shaped sunglasses, gifted by a fan in the audience. The venue turned into a giant party as everyone gave it their all one last time, before we said, so long, au revoir, to THE DRIVER ERA.