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The final weekend of Summerfest 2025 kicked off on Thursday, with a big crowd as Milwaukee headed into the holiday weekend ready to see a slew of mostly younger acts across the festival’s stages. Among them was Lovejoy, who brought a smaller crowd to the Miller Lite Oasis, but they more than made up for it in enthusiasm.
On the spectrum of young, buzzing bands to come over from England and take America by storm, Lovejoy sonically leans more in the direction of a band like Arctic Monkeys or The Kooks than say, you know, The Beatles. But from the reactions of the Miller Lite Oasis crowd to every movement and every open lyric from frontman William Gold and company, it certainly felt like big things are on the way for the band.
The frenzy started before the band even hit the stage, with fans audibly counting down the seconds to the 10:15 start time before chanting the band’s name. While they weren’t big in numbers, the Miller Lite Oasis crowd were certainly loud enough to give the band the warmest of welcomes, and opener “Normal People Things” got them jumping up and down in a hurry.
Over the course of an hour, the band wouldn’t lose the crowd’s support at any point, with singalongs to a set that consisted largely of material from the band’s EPs and singles. It’s an impressive feat to be a Summerfest headliner without a full-length record out, and the band would acknowledge that missing piece of their discography, as well.
“We’ve got an album coming out this year” said Gold, to a wave of screams. “Our debut album. It only took us four fucking years to make it, because we’ve been too busy making EPs.”
The tease of the new record would also find its way into the setlist, too. Thursday night’s show not only featured new song “With Rob As My Witness,” but also two unreleased songs, “Foxholes” and “Perfect Blue.” Before the latter, an audible “oh my god!” could be heard from the crowd on-stage, to which Gold smiled while strumming the opening chords.
With four years of material to draw from, they would bounce around the rest of their budding catalogue in the set, but every song felt like a fan favorite. The band seemed to revel in the moment, as well, knowing that anything they played next would get screams. Gold would lead the way, flanked by guitarist Joe Goldsmith and bassist Ashley Stevens, who was heavy in the mix, bringing a distinctly funky sound to their brand of indie rock.
When you have only four years of material, everything feels fairly current, which seemed to make Thursday’s show only more exciting. The fans knew the words to everything, including the unreleased tracks, but nothing elicited more of a reaction than 2021’s “Concrete,” which came at the tail end of the hour-long set. The night would then close on “Portrait of a Blank State” and “The Fall,” but they could have played anything from their previous releases, and it would have felt like the night’s closer.
There’s a different energy when you’re watching a band that is very visibly on the incline, and on Thursday night, that was more than evident at Summerfest. While the band didn’t have the biggest crowd on the festival grounds that night, they likely had one of the most enthusiastic, and the next time that they play Milwaukee, you can expect that it will be considerably bigger.
