If you’re any band formed in Tucson, playing the Rialto Theatre is what you’re daydreaming about from the beginning. The place has seen a lot in its hundred-plus years on Congress Street in downtown Tucson. From Silent films, a run as a cinema, briefly a porn theater in the 70s. The Rialto has seen some stuff. On April 8th it was packed with exactly the kind of crowd you’d expect from a lineup like this: mostly college kids carefully put together in their all-black fits, colored hair everywhere, the occasional Title Fight shirt, all there to see After and Fleshwater with Tucson’s own Commoner kicking things off.

Playing your hometown in a historic room that size, in front of a crowd that came ready, as the opener for none other than Fleshwater. For a band on their way up, that has to feel pretty damn good. Commoner handled it like they definitely belonged there, because they most certainly do. The Tucson shoegaze/post-hardcore outfit, whatever labels we’re throwing out these days, signed to Pure Noise Records last fall and came into the night riding the high of their freshly dropped single “Last Exit,” which they played to a crowd that took to it the way a good song deserves. Frontman Romin Mattison was covering a lot of ground on the stage, engaging the whole of the packed Rialto crowd and getting them more than ready for what was to come the rest of the night. Flanked by a bassist whose hair was doing half the work for him and a guitarist who was absolutely locked in, the band just has a cool sound. Bathed in deep reds and blues from the stage lighting, the whole set felt like a shoegazy sonic dream. Think a heavier Movements if they grew up on David Lynch films. The best is clearly still ahead for Commoner, and nights like this are how people start paying attention.