After two great singles and the promise of an upcoming album, Thursday’s The Bombettes show at Bruar Falls was probably one of my most highly anticipated shows for the Spring.

The Bombettes are a five-piece all-girl pop-punk band out of Sweden with a sound that tempts me to use the word “feisty” when describing it but I won’t for fear of being hunted down and killed by the band.

In the two EPs, What’s Cooking, Good Looking? and You Have No Chance, Lance! the five-piece has crafted fun and bouncy pop rock music that moves at punk rock speeds. While the music is generally about hanging out and having fun, there was a hint of gender role-reversal the songs are less about love and more about using men in an almost predatory category.

The first song on their first EP solidifies this as “Dating Scene” opens with “I’m bored /You’re not good enough / I’m bored / and your record collection is too small” before launching into a chorus of how you take her out and she makes you pay and she has no interest in you beyond what you can do for her. This continues through the rest of the EP. “I Wanna” has lyrics like “I wanna kick your ass because you have a nice ass / I wanna beat you up because you make my heart speed up.” “It Ain’t Me Babe” about one night stands ends with “Don’t talk / just walk / out the door”

Though when The Bombettes aren’t subverting the typical gender dynamic in punk, they’re capable of turning out some pretty strange lyrics in straightforward songs about love. Despite of the content of the lyrics, the music was always immediate and poppy and was the kind of thing you’d find yourself bobbing along to without being aware of what you were doing. It was music made for spring flings, designed to leave you breathless and sweaty, but over before summer had even settled.

As they were a female punk band from Europe, I had not expected to see them live until they had somehow grabbed a major indie label and were being pushed as the “next big thing”, a title they deserve but The Bombettes may be a bit too confrontational for a country that still likes to market women musicians as a novelty. So the chance to catch them at Bruar Falls on a very short tour was a great bit of luck.

That they’d be performing with New Jersey’s Night Birds was a bit of a bonus. I was totally unaware of the band until I found out that Grave Mistake Records was putting out a 7” of theirs with the marketing hitting several buzzwords I liked. JFA, Agent Orange, Adolescents love them. All of them. Tracking down the demo, I could kind of hear it, but it didn’t really come together until I had seen them live.

We walked in a bit late, and found that the Bruar Falls was tiny and it was also packed. The bar had been divided somewhat in half by a black curtain and someone was taking money. Then you could walk in and get about two inches into the room before you were so close to someone else that you’d have been married in other cultures.

When you go see a show in NY, there’s usually a good chunk of people paying attention to something else as though the band on stage is ancillary to why they paid the cover charge.

Not this time. Every head was turned to the stage, watching as Night Birds had finally managed to make good on those reported influences. Razor sharp songs played clean played fast. Brian, the lead singer paced the tiny stage unafraid to sing and the band was there to remind people what melodic hardcore used to sound like.

Where the guitar and the bass act in concert with the drums and all three conspire to make you dance rather than smash the person next to you in the face. There wasn’t much of either, as most people seemed to be holding themselves in reserve for the rest of the acts. Night Birds didn’t seem to mind as they sweat blood to entertain people who watched as silent and reverent as a congregation.

After their set, I snagged their two 7” and I suggest you do the same. Best example of the surf punk sound since the almighty Agent Orange.

The third band, No Friends, boasting a member of Municipal Waste and everyone else enlisted from The New Mexican Disaster Squad does what is now regarded a more traditional melodic hardcore. The short heavy songs reminding me more of bands you’d find on Flipside Magazine’s vinyl output than say, Vagrant records. We moved up closer so we could see, but I think in doing so we may have really done ourselves a disservice because the sounds coming from the speakers for No Friends didn’t really resemble what was on the records I ended up buying from them after their set. Though they have two 12” releases, I don’t know how often we’ll get to see this band tour, so if you can, I’d suggest checking them out. Hella fun. Their album covers make it seem like the music is going to be darker than it actually is, so I suggest looking past them if that turns you off.

I can’t say why No Friends really grabbed me but Deep Sleep didn’t. There was a kind of hardness in the vocals and coldness in the music with which I couldn’t connect. I will say this though; Tony, the lead singer, fucking owned that stage. Pacing through every song like he was trapped on that stage and if it weren’t some invisible barrier we couldn’t see, he’d plunge into the audience and tear open our throats. Every stance was amazingly iconic and the musicianship was on point but the music just didn’t grab me like the other acts had so far.

The Bombettes took to the stage and it was immediately obvious that something was off. They were using equipment loaned from the rest of the bands and they didn’t even get two songs out of the way before the kick pedal broke almost stranding the band without a full drum kit. After a guitar trade and a last minute kick pedal replacement, The Bombettes were in full effect.

Pulling a set list predominately from their yet to be released first album Get out of my Trailer, Sailor, Elin made certain to introduce each song and give us at least a sentence or two about what it was about. “Cherry Shot” is about a tour in France where they drank too much and didn’t eat nearly enough telling us “after this tour we’ll have to make a fat song.” “Cock Rock” is about boys who think they’re impressive because they’re in a band. It’s always kind of nice to get that interaction and provide the audience a bit of context especially if you’re hearing many of the songs for the first time.

They managed to play the best songs from the previous two EPs and the audience gamely joined in singing along to “It Ain’t Me”, “Oh Boy”, and “Dating Scene.” The small stage cramped the band, and it seemed like they’d have moved around a bit more if they could, but only the singer could really show any emotion.

There was no encore, but when they stopped the crowd managed to plead with the band to play one final song before breaking up and proceeding to sell out of a lot of their merch to the crowd that was ready to buy whatever they had for sale.

It was a great line up and I look forward to catching Night Birds again, and hopefully The Bombettes come back again soon.