Courage My Love performed at Walter’s Downtown on the Lost Causes Tour on Thursday, Nov. 20. The show attracted a very small crowd, but caused for intimate band member relations.

Like most pop punk bands, CML had a few too many openers, the grand total being four, the final three all Texas natives. Most of the blame for this is their popularity. As a band from the small town of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, their fame in Houston is quite small. They attracted about 10 VIP tickets and only around 30 attendees.

The first band to play, Buttons, was an acoustic duo from San Diego. Their songs had deep lyrics and the sound was surprisingly harsh, in a good way, for something that seemed like it would be soft.

Up next was Spencer Fort. They also had amazing sound and included a variety of music, the frontman playing a guitar, saxophone, and cowbell through different songs.

Afterwards was Vanilla Sugar, a hardcore electro-punk band featuring hard beats, killer chords, intense electronics, and even a little screamo. They rocked the stage, playing loud and extreme.

The final opener, The Artillery, had a soft voice but hard hitting lyrics and sound. It was apparently the rhythm guitarist’s first show, but with the amazing parts coming out of the amps, you could not even tell.

Gallery • 10 Photos

Photo by: Circe Marez

The three-piece pop punk band from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada discussing before the performance. Left to right: Mercedes Arn-Horn, Brandon Lockwood. Phoenix Arn-Horn behind Lockwood.

Finally, Courage My Love themselves performed. They opened with “Skin and Bone”, which got a huge response from the crowd. Then was “Cold Blooded”, and afterwards, “We’re Not In Kansas Anymore”. Mercedes Arn-Horn, the lead singer and guitarist, used her body with every lyric, constantly moving with every lyrical stress and music beat. Bassist Brandon Lockwood had the highest tendency to jump up on boxes on stage, headbanging as he strummed. Phoenix Arn-Horn, twin to Mercedes and drummer and backing vocals, was constantly rocking out behind the set as well. The fourth song of the night was “Disappear” and encouraged crowd interaction, in screaming back “You’re a stranger now”, an echoed lyric during the bridge. The next song was entirely new, featuring lyrics “You and I could be brighter/than a thousand hands holding lighters/you and I spark an ember.” Afterwards they played an old song, “Low”, and then the tour’s namesake “Lost Cause”. Next was a cover of Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse”, then “Bridges”, and finally “You Don’t Know How” as a closer. The crowd managed to get an encore out of them as well, resulting in the addition of “Barricade”.

The setlist consisted of a good mix of songs off their two albums, For Now and Becoming. There was a lot of movement onstage, including tons of jumping and headbanging as well as lots of back and forth between Mercedes and Lockwood, switching places or meeting in the middle and playing extremely close to each other. Mercedes also had a great time chanting “the stars at night are big and bright!” multiple times throughout the night, laughing and smiling with all the synchronized clapping and every full-powered “deep in the heart of Texas!” response. The crowd was loud about everything, whether it was singing lyrics, cheering through guitar solos, or simply screaming appreciation and appraisal after every song.

The performance was amazing, and the setlist rocked. This is a band worth seeing live any time they come down to Houston. They have an upcoming show during South By So What?! Festival in Grand Prairie, Texas, as well as Never Say Never Fest in Mission, Texas, both of which will be in March 2015. There are also suspicions that they will be the openers for an upcoming Hawthorne Heights acoustic tour in 2015. The band also performed during the 2014 Vans Warped Tour, so here’s hoping they will also be one of the bands announced for 2015.