The Pageant has hosted plenty of nights that feel bigger than the room. Thursday was one of them.
Candlebox opened its “Can’t Quit You” fall tour in the Delmar Loop with founding guitarist Peter Klett back in the fold, and the Seattle band sounded like a group that still has something to prove. Opening the bill, The Mountain Goats delivered a sharp, literate set that turned a pairing that looked odd on paper into one of the more satisfying double bills the venue has booked this year.
John Darnielle and company wasted no time. They opened with “Song for Layne Staley,” a pointed nod to the Northwest scene that produced both acts, then moved through “Cry for Judas,” “You Were Cool,” and “Days” with the kind of focused intensity that makes a Mountain Goats show feel like a short story collection read at volume. The mid-set surprise was “Candlebox,” a newer song Darnielle has said he wrote last summer—weeks before the tour offer arrived. Playing it in the same room as the band that inspired the title felt less like a gimmick than a wink from the universe. The set closed the way Mountain Goats sets should: “No Children” and “This Year,” the crowd shouting the latter’s defiant chorus as if it were a communal vow.
Candlebox took the stage like a band that remembers why it started. Kevin Martin’s voice still cuts through a packed room, and Klett’s return added bite to the guitar work that defined the early records. They opened with “Arrow” and “Stand,” then moved through “Change,” “Blossom,” and “Don’t You” without treating the catalog like a museum piece. Newer and deeper cuts—“Vexatious,” “Believe in It,” “Sweet Summertime,” “Cellphone Jesus,” “Happy Pills”—sat comfortably next to the songs that put them on the radio. The pacing never sagged. The band played like it wanted the night to last.
The closing stretch did what Candlebox closers have done for three decades. “Far Behind” still lands with the same ache it carried in 1993, and “You” sent the room home loud. Martin and the band looked like they were enjoying the work. The audience looked like it was, too.
The pairing worked because neither act treated the other as a novelty. The Mountain Goats brought narrative precision and a room full of people who listen for lyrics. Candlebox brought muscle, melody, and the kind of live authority that only comes from having survived the ’90s and kept going. Together they made a midweek show in St. Louis feel like an event.
The “Can’t Quit You” tour has a long road ahead. If Thursday was the opening statement, the rest of the run has a high bar. The Pageant, once again, proved it knows how to host a night that people will talk about on the way out the door.
