the best bands of gonerfest 23

Gonerfest 23 marked my tenth year living in Memphis and was somehow the eleventh Gonerfest I’ve been to. The festival may be on its third set of locations (now at Wiseacre Brewing and Overton Shell) since I’ve been attending, but some things stay the same. Year after year, the world’s most dedicated rock and roll freaks descend on Memphis during the last weekend of September to go on a punk bender and spend an uncountable amount of money on shirts, records, and beer. 

This year featured the most genre-expansive lineup in Gonerfest history, with more of an emphasis on folk, country, and indie rock than usual. This caught some flack (especially online–the livestream comments were merciless during Zoh Amba) but I wasn’t too bothered by it. Gonerfest hasn’t really been solely about “punk” or “garage rock” for years now. How many times did the late Reverend John Wilkins play? Was Etran De L'Aïr at Gonerfest 22 not punk enough for the festival? What makes Gonerfest special to me is the community and the curation. I love the community and I trust the curation, even when I don’t totally get it on paper. 

Part of what makes the fest beautiful is seeing the same folks I see every Gonerfest–people who have housed my band on the road, Instagram homies I only get to see once per year, and friends who have moved away but still make time for this four day affair. The whole squad coming together to watch acts like TY and Gwenifer Raymond is beautiful. Maybe that’s just a byproduct of Gonerfest being my gateway into the wild world of punk, but I tend to not care as much about genre hardlines as the average guy scowling in a Dead Moon t-shirt. Gonerfest is about seeing great sets with your weird friends all day and then going to a bar at 2:30 AM to see more great music with your now very drunk weird friends. As long as that stays true, I don’t think it matters how many acoustic guitars find their way onstage.

The following is a list of what I consider to be the best bands I saw while drinking craft lagers, watching trains go by on the tracks beside the brewery, and occasionally making my way into the pit. This is not an exhaustive list of every good band who played, as that would more or less be a reprint of the whole schedule. Special shoutout to Infinity Stairs for providing visuals for the festival, including projecting on the silos opposite from the stage.  At one point they had advertisements for the beers spinning around on them, making them look like giant, revolving cans. Amazing. If you’ve never been to Gonerfest, I highly recommend it. Just come prepared to spend all your cash.

BEST BAND WITH A SONG ABOUT SMOKING CRACK IN HELL: Powerplant

I’m not usually a Pit Guy. I like to stand outside of the pit, smiling and nodding with my arms folded at all of the youngsters having their fun. This is where I found myself when Powerplant kicked into “Florida,” their song about how being in Florida is kind of like smoking crack in Hell (I think). I felt a pair of arms bear hug my body, lift all 193 pounds of me into the air, spin me into the pit, and push me on my merry way. There wasn’t anything left to do at that point besides give myself to the scene. This set was sloppy as all get out, but it’s Gonerfest. Who gives a fuck about accuracy? The point is to play so fast that I feel compelled to throw my beer can at your dour keyboard player. And I did!

At one point, I saw someone leave the pit and come back with a full cup of water just so he could throw it in the air, showering the sweaty moshers with cool rock manna. Between blistering takes on Bridge of Sacrifice’s black metal/egg punk hybrid tunes and earlier new-wavey material like “Heat” (which I crowned the Song of the Summer 2025 in this very website’s end of year broadsheet), there were a lot of reasons to fling liquid into the air. I’m not a Pit Guy, but I forcibly became one for the weekend.

BEST DANCE MOVES: D. Sablu

I have “David Fuckin’ Sabludowsky” written in my notes for this set. I’m not sure what moment inspired that but, yeah, absolutely, David Fuckin’ Sabludowsky. No matter who he recruits for his revolving-door band, you know they’re going to give you everything they have. This specific lineup played for the first time ever the night before, which astounds me. They absolutely crushed it, ripping through tracks from 2024’s criminally underrated stomper No True Silence and their most recent 7” Righteous Light.

Sabludowsky is a wild performer, pumping his fists and swinging his arms while his band plays claustrophobic, hardcore-tinged rock. By the end of the set, he was on his knees and screaming. This felt like a vestige of what Gonerfest used to be–crammed in, loud, and sweaty at the Hi-Tone–transported into swankier outdoor environs. 

BEST UNEXPECTED COVER: Carrion Kids

I promise that I mean no disrespect to TY and their phenomenally silly cover of Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away,” but Carrion Kids ending their set with a cover of Devo’s “Mongoloid,” complete with Spanish-translated lyrics, was an all time Gonerfest moment for me. Singer-guitarist Miki Navajas dropped his guitar, grabbed the mic, and hopped in the crowd to scream the unfamiliar words in a melody the whole crowd knew by heart. He was wearing a diaper too, which I think he was stuffing. I stared at it for too long trying to figure that one out.

When they weren’t covering Devo, they were fusing together hardcore and horror punk, with Navajas being complimented by keyboardist Jasmina Hirschl’s piercing banshee wail. The two seemed deeply in love (or lust), making out and spitting into each other’s mouths in between furious tunes. They sounded like a version of Lost Sounds that is willing to be a little sillier and theatrical instead of angry as hell all the time. At Gonerfest, that’s like calling them the second coming of the Beatles.

BEST HOMECOMING: Memo PST

Memo PST’s Chris Shaw doesn’t come back to Memphis too often. His split with Ex-Cult in 2018 and move to the greener [derogatory] pastures of Los Angeles seemed like a permanent line in the sand, leaving some sort of sordid past behind for a new life of DJing for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and only living on locally in tall tales of dive bar shows. The anticipation for his return to Memphis had been building to an almost comical degree ever since Memo PST was added to the lineup, and the crowd’s lurch at the first notes of “I Smoke It, It Smokes Me” felt like years of tension being released. I smoked a Black and Mild for the first time in damn near 13 years before their set and let me tell you–that shit did, in fact, smoke me.

It was the right state for their brand of scummy, street punk that came across way scuzzier [complimentary] live than it does on their relatively slicked back records. I ran into Chris’ family in the merch line after the set, where they spent 10 minutes debating about which records to buy before deciding on all of them. “Thanks for your patience,” one of them said to me. “We don’t get to see him too often these days.” I told her no one in Memphis does, and we were all happy he decided to finally come home. I think she appreciated that. I hope Chris did, too.

BEST YOUTH BEAT BAND: Parking

Between Sharp Pins last year and the triple threat of Mod Lang, Horsegirl, and Parking this year, Gonerfest really has its finger on the pulse of the burgeoning youth-oriented indie rock scene. Parking feels like an outlier amongst that crew, ditching their compatriots’ power pop and twee and enveloping themselves in dark post-punk. Drummer/vocalist T. Moore plays a stripped down kit with one comically high cymbal, which I thought was one of those “I put it that high so I don’t overuse it” drummer-brain things until I saw him smash the absolute shit out of it on every song.

Every time I see one of these younger bands, I get mad at 20-year-old me for not realizing you could be good at your instrument at that age. I thought being a drunk mess who got mad at the sound guy for no reason was part of the deal. Moore was the most technically gifted drummer of the weekend and somehow pulled it off an Olympic-level drum clinic while singing. I’m a drummer and in my expert opinion, that should be impossible. I wish I could do that. Every note of this was pitch perfect, even when they were coaxing wild sounds out of their instruments. A train went by at one point. Normally, bands at Gonerfest take this as a good sign, cracking jokes about it or raising their beer to the conductor. Parking just played faster and louder. What an incredible set.

BEST SET THAT ALMOST FELL APART: Zoh Amba

“I think feedback is God’s way of trying to talk to me, but I turn it off and try not to listen,” Zoh Amba said to the mostly perplexed crowd while changing out guitars during their set. Amba’s career has taken a lot of strange turns–from free jazz sax skronking to folk rocking with Jim White to playing sax with Iggy Pop at Coachella–and now here they were, freshly split with their backing band, playing to a crowd of people here to see the exact opposite of the shaky folk tunes they were offering.

They seemed unprepared and nervous to be playing solo, which really endeared me to them in a way I wasn’t expecting. Amba ditched any sense of subtlety to howl, mewl, and snarl their way through a fraught set of damaged songs. They even picked up the sax to play a bit of John Coltrane’s “Reverend King” in celebration of his 100th birthday. A train, an ever present force of man-made nature at Wiseacre Brewing, blew its horn as they were introducing the piece. “That’s right, God,” Amba replied, before attacking their instrument. I was wondering how this set would fit into a punk festival but, in retrospect, I didn’t need to worry about that at all.

BEST BAND THAT ALSO FUNCTIONS AS AN ANTI-AI STATEMENT: Cherry Cheeks

The sarcastic “I love my A.I. girlfriend!” that kicks off Cherry Cheeks’ “Cruel Bore” hits different when you’re in Memphis. D.O. And The Bytes, their latest record, skewered all things AI, Internet, and late stage capitalism. With the specter of the xAI datacenter looming over this city all the time, it was nice to throw myself into the shockingly active 3:00 PM pit for a second to work my feelings out about it. Cherry Cheeks, like most egg punk, works better for me live than on record. The live band’s muscle and velocity allowed the catchy theremin-esque keyboard lines to really cut through a meaty base instead of floating on top of a lofi drum machine. Both are good, but the live version of Cherry Cheeks has always been my favorite way to enjoy their music. Lead Cheek Kyle Harms and his band should cut a live-in-studio record sometime soon. If it’s anything like this set, they’d be billionaires in no time.

BEST STAGE BANTER: Slippers

Slippers: I love Memphis. I fantasize about moving here all the time.

Guy in crowd: Do it!

Slippers: Yeah, I’m gonna do it. I hadn’t done it before, but now that a guy in glasses yelled at me, I’m gonna do it. That’s all it takes.

Slippers’ Madeline Babuka Black should MC Gonerfest next year. In between catchy twee-pop tunes from this year’s sparkling smash indiepop hit Slippers 06, she expressed her complicated relationship with Gen Xers (“You’re always in the front, but it’s okay because you will drop $50 at the merch table.”), wished for more trains to come by during her set (which she got, right at the end), and shit talked Elon Musk (“You fuck with Memphis, you fuck with me. I played one show here, that means I’m from here now”). I normally hate when people talk to the crowd too much, but when you’re this deep into Memphis and your songs compliment the setting sun perfectly, I’ll let it slide. Light and airy pop perfection.

BEST BAND THAT INSPIRED MULTIPLE MEN I KNOW TO GET DRUNKER THAN THEY’VE EVER BEEN IN THEIR LIVES: Tha Retail Simps

When I first heard “Weapon of the Mystic” while on tour with Big Clown, it made me feel like how The Shape of Jazz to Come must have made jazz critics feel back in the day. This was innovation in the avant-garage, a new standard in the long history of smart guys pretending to be dumb. Tha Retail Simps’ new EP Real Simple comes hot on the heels of their last record, where they changed their name and re-recorded and re-titled songs from their confusing discography.

This is not a normal band, and they did not play a normal set. The songs feel more like a foundation for them to stumble over and fall into rather than a template to work from. Every instrument jockeyed for the lead position, culminating in a tune where every member seemed to be playing a completely different chord in some syncopated, tumbling rhythm. At least two friends of mine told me they were so drunk they “didn’t know what was going on” during the set, which feels like the right state of mind to be in for a Simps show. 

BEST BAND TO CROSS THE GENERATIONAL DIVIDE: Death

There’s a growing divide among the young and old at Gonerfest. The undercard—full of bands like TY, Cherry Cheeks, and Powerplant—feels more tuned to a generation that got into punk primarily through social media. The headliners usually feel like an appeal to the folks that have been going to Gonerfest for all 23 years of its existence. This clash has become more and more apparent over the years (culminating in just about everyone I know under the age of 35 leaving right before Toody Cole played, yeesh) and I’ve been wondering what the remedy for it could possibly be. I didn’t expect it to be Detroit’s proto-punk legends Death, but maybe I should have.

Death played the hits, sure, but they played them like a band that put out their hit single five months ago, not fifty years ago. It warmed my heart to see young and old alike shoving each other in the pit. The spirit took me, so I wandered in after them, only to have my head collide with someone else’s almost immediately. Ouch. “Politicians In My Eyes” still sounds incredible even when you have a splitting headache, thankfully.   

BEST BAND THAT ALMOST KILLED ME: Man or Astro-Man?

After absolutely demolishing a set of cosmic surf-punk, Man or Astro-Man?’s Coco the Electronic Monkey Wizard pointed hopped offstage and asked the crowd to follow him. He disappeared briefly and reemerged with a giant homemade Tesla coil on wheels. “Stand back!” he yelled, as he held the plug and cord like a 1950s monster movie mad scientist. He turned on the contraption and lightning shot out above the heads of the crowd, knocking out one Infinity Stairs’ projectors.

I’ve seen blood at Gonerfest. I’ve seen people get wheeled out, exhausted from the heat and dehydrated from beer and whatever else they’ve consumed. I have never, ever seen anything half as dangerous as this. The complete sensory overload of their giant-iPhone prop setup mixed with the Infinity Stairs’ visuals on the Overton Park Shell’s “parabolic reflector” (gotta keep kayfabe) would’ve been enough for me to mark this one down as an all time great Gonerfest ender. The fact that I almost got shocked to death only adds to it. 

Zach Mitchell, aka @jorty_spice, is a member of the bands Big Clown and Missed Dunks at Summer League. He runs Machine Duplication Recordings and the newsletter MDR Observer.

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