The Sound of You Laughing Tour in Phoenix
ThxSoMch, Carter De Filippis, hails from Toronto and has been making waves in the darkwave genre since 2022, with his biggest singles coming in the form of Spit in My Face! and Hate. His latest album, The Sound of You Laughing, dropped just a little over two months ago and has garnered millions of streams on Spotify. Already having kicked off this tour of the US in Salt Lake City, ThxSoMch and crew made their stop in the desert.
The Crescent Ballroom was packed even for a Tuesday night, even before the first band took the stage, but it’s always exciting to see locals take the stage in a big way with their support system cheering from the crowd. Locals to Scottsdale, Arizona, self-proclaimed ‘psychedelic’ rock band Bummer Girl hyped the ever-eager crowd. After rolling through a couple of songs, drummer Devin and lead guitarist Walter switch their positions and drive through the rest of their set, even playing an unreleased song.
On the more permanent side of the lineup, re6ce took the stage next, armed with only his guitar and a laptop. The Liverpool native told the crowd, everything Arizona domestics love to hear, that it was indeed hot. Look, when you live in 112-degree weather for half of the year, 85 isn’t all that bad. A girl in the front row countered his comment with just that, garnering a laugh from the artist along with the crowd. Walking through the crowd, I could hear plenty of voices harmonizing along, knowing the setlist front to back, but the crowd was begging for the artist's biggest song to be played, brown eyes*, which was carried out as the set closer. Releasing his most recent work in the spring of 2025, his sound meshes the best with the grunge aesthetic of the main act.
The energy seemed to never dull and only got better with ThxSoMch taking the stage; his vitality is contagious. He makes use of the whole stage, keeping in tune but still raging, and all eyes are on him. A couple of songs in, he addresses the crowd, letting us know that he must’ve caught some sort of flu while at their last stop, since he had been sick on the bus the whole ride here. Sick or not, this dude kept the crowd hyped, and his energy never seemed to dwindle, and ended his set with the hit Spit in My Face!.
