Swedish House Mafia - Madison Square Garden - 3/1/2013

Pics by Laura June Kirsch. See More Photos From The Evening.

If Friday night's Swedish House Mafia show were a short film, it would open on the scene where I'm in a stall in the men's room, surrounded by screaming, rolling 18 year olds, knocking back a shooter of Bushmill's and wondering what turn my life took to bring me to this point. Since this is, in fact, a blog post, I'll offer a more straightforward introduction.

See also: Live: Swedish House Mafia Reign Supreme At Madison Square Garden

The Swedish House Mafia formed in 2008 when DJs Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso decided they'd be better off working as a trio. Five years later, they are bigger than anyone could have imagined. Crossing the globe for a final time, they are in the process of playing five New York City shows, one at the Hammerstein Ballroom, one at Madison Square Garden, then three in a row at Brooklyn's Barclays Center. Although they are nominally a house group, many are calling their wave of dance artists the new punk. Meanwhile, their last single, "Don't You Worry Child," is an ambitious power ballad worthy of hair metal, and when critics accuse them of selling out, of making their hooks obvious and their fans stupid, that only means they're playing pop music and playing it the way it's supposed to played.

Having seen that Madison Square Garden show, I can confirm both the size of the hooks and the stupidity of the fans, or at least the stupidity of the one who entered the arena by his lonesome, expecting to get through the night armed with only a notebook and a dollar-fifty bottle of booze. Actually, it was a pretty good time. Pete Tong opened with a set highlighted, as it turned out, by a SHM song (Axwell's remix of Ivan Gough and Feenixpawl's "In My Mind") that didn't make it into the headliners' two hour set, and Armand van Helden followed by moving from bass-heavy EDM tunes into some Baauer, R.L. Grimes' "Satisfaction" remix, and ultimately, oddly, his own "Witch Docktor," a track older than at least a quarter of the crowd.

See also: EDC 2012: House Music Beef With DJ Sneak Plays Out in Steve Angello's DJ Set