Prior to headliner Never Knows Best taking the stage at the Redwood Bar, Spiral Teeth (you can read my review of that set here) told the audience "Happy New Year's Eve Eve." It was nearly the last day of 2025 and I finally made it to the Redwood Bar for the first time that year. The Redwood Bar isn't part of my standard rotation of venues that I visit, but you'd think I would have hit up the venue more than once in 2025.
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| Never Knows Best at the Redwood Bar |
No matter, my only time heading to the venue in 2025 was well worth it. One reason was driven by Never Knows Best. Their set was filled with mostly new material that will be part of an upcoming album release so one could argue this was a mini-release party. The band is comprised of Cameron Dunbar on guitars and lead vocals, Scott Neff on guitar, synths, and backing vocals, and Justin Schultz on synths. The band has no doubt been carefully crafting their upcoming new releases. The band mentioned that the only 2025 release was their cover of Joy Division's "Disorder." There's been a wide gap in music releases. There were a series of releases in 2020 and then two music videos based on those songs were released in 2023.
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| Never Knows Best at the Redwood Bar |
Their set reminded me of Depeche Mode. Based on the fact that they did a Joy Division cover, that is another band that provides inspiration to them. Their Spotify bio says the following, "Never Knows Best has been described as merging retro electronic sounds with modern technology and aggressive post-punk guitars."
Comment of the set (from the audience): drink that water. Amusingly, Dunbar started to sing "Wait and See" while still holding that bottle of water and had to find an opportunity to set the bottle aside so that he could start playing his guitar.
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| Never Knows Best at the Redwood Bar |
This band may say that they're "electronic" and "post-punk," but I would add to this that the band wants the audience to hear and understand those baritone sung lyrics. Vocals were not distorted by overuse of reverb. Not only is this band wanting us to listen to their moody atmospheric sounds, but also enjoy their songwriting skills. In terms of instrumentals, Neff switched between guitar and synths, which meant that their songs either were performed with two synth players or two guitar players.
I should probably wait until their new songs get released to focus on a spotlight song, but if I waited a month or so I might totally forget to finish up this blog post. So I'm going to spotlight the title track of their 2020 debut EP titled Wait and See.
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| Never Knows Best at the Redwood Bar |
It is a song about fate winning no matter what you do. Is this something that the songwriter really believes? Or is this a reverse psychology song?
I prefer to watch and wait
Find a way
for someone to give me what I need
It's far more easy
Setlist: Carolina, Wait and See, Something From Nothing, I Guess, More To Us, Disorder (Joy Division cover), Lost Not Found, Hell, Save Our Selves.
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