Smoking Popes

Details

Smoking Popes are scheduled to perform on Thursday, August 14.

Rhythm Room

Related Content

• Five Holiday Gifts For Your Hipster Sibling
  December 15, 2011
• Alkaline Trio at Nile Theatre, 7/24/11
  July 25, 2011
• Seven Concerts We Were Sad to See Cancelled in 2011
  December 6, 2011
• Tom "Soda" Gardocki on Spike Jonze, 12-String Banjo, Jackass, and Weezer
  December 7, 2011
• Weezer, Black Label Society, Keith Urban, and More Cancel Phoenix Dates
  September 13, 2011

More About

• Smoking Popes
• Patrick Park
• Josh Caterer
• Punk Rock
• House and Home

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

If the most enduring proto-emo bands were the ones that wrote the best hooks, Smoking Popes would be right up there with the Promise Ring and the Get Up Kids. Like those groups, the Popes' penchant for melody resided solely on the shoulders of a lead singer (Josh Caterer) with a consummate croon that drowned out his peer bands' sneering. After a seven-year hiatus, the Popes are making a welcome comeback with Stay Down. The 12-song LP is being released on Kansas City's Appeal Records (formerly called Curb Appeal), home to the New Amsterdams and Blackpool Lights, as well as Patrick Park and Barcelona. While other '90s-at-noon staples such as Weezer and the Smashing Pumpkins have become cheap imitations of their former selves, the Popes just keep doing what they do: pitch-perfect pop-punk made purely for the joy of it. For these fumigating pontiffs, the choir still rejoices.