Equal parts sweat and excitement hang thick in the air after a full day of performances at the 80/35 music fest. It’s July 8, 2023, and it’s Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops’ festival afterparty at The LiFT in Des Moines. Even without attending this particular show, the scene is lucid and the energy is palpable — encased in glass and commemorated through the band’s electrifying live album release Live At The Lift.
Often, live albums are big hits or misses in the music industry. On rare occasions, a live recording might help form a band’s legacy, à la Cheap Trick’s At Bukadon and Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison. But more often than not, they’re blips in a discography for die-hard fans only.
Though it’s often difficult to argue for the necessity of a live album, once in a while, one can stand alone from its polished studio counterparts. Live At The Lift is one of them.
On the second-to-last song of the album, Greg Wheeler announces, “We played a set earlier at 80/35. I don’t know if y’all can tell, but my voice is fried. I can’t scream like I usually do.” Quips like these contribute atmosphere and rawness to the tracklist — although the truth is, the music trio is in peak form here, with no indication of previous performances of the day. Wheeler screams with abandon, synchronizing with drum beats and stoking crowd cheers the higher and longer the yells are.
The Des Moines-based Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops — the playful moniker of singer and guitarist Wheeler, bassist Jill McLain Meister and drummer Hutch — are well-loved for their live hijinks across Mission Creek Festival, Pokey’s Fest and countless venues around and outside Iowa. When you’re known for rowdy punk garage rock best experienced head banging right up against the show speakers, your band might have the best case for delivering that live experience to fans’ headphones and car stereos.
Performing primarily from their 2023 album Manic Fever, the live versions are faster and looser with an unrelenting frenzied energy that doesn’t let up for its entire 27-minute runtime. The guitar shredding solo in “Waste Away” is more satisfyingly manic. The deep growls of Wheeler’s vocals on “Itch” feature more crackling reverb, unraveling into an unearthly scream that would fit right at home on a haunted house sound effect track. The hypnotic rhymes of the track “Nothing” are more punctuated here, as each word is spit directly into a microphone.
Another way to make a worthy live album? Release live versions of new songs before they’re recorded, as is the case for “Bile Blaster” and “Exoteric” on Live At The Lift. Both new additions are explosive, with catchy hooks and well-placed sections of wailing, both vocally and instrumentally. You’ll feel teleported to that fateful Saturday night a little over a year ago.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s November 2024 issue.
