Giant Rooks bring a brand-new album to Union Transfer

A month after releasing their third LP, "If Heaven Exists, This Might Be It," the German indie band plays Spring Garden Street on Saturday, Nov. 14.

Next Saturday, a band from Hamm, Germany will be standing in an 1889 farmers market building on Spring Garden Street, playing songs that had only been out for four weeks. That's the pitch for Giant Rooks at Union Transfer: a fresh record, heard on the road almost right away.

Giant Rooks play Union Transfer on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 8 p.m. Tickets are through AXS. The room holds about 1,200, and the Philadelphia date lands in the middle of a quick East Coast swing: Boston on the 12th, Brooklyn on the 13th, here on the 14th, and the 9:30 Club in Washington on the 15th. After that the tour heads south and west, with Charlotte, Nashville and Minneapolis later in the month.

The reason for the trip came out on Oct. 16. *If Heaven Exists, This Might Be It* is the band's third studio album, following *Rookery* in 2020 and *How Have You Been?* in 2024. Vertigo Berlin released it, and singles like "The Big Night Out" led the way. There are two guest spots: Conic Rose on the title track and Solann on "The Waves." The band's own description of the record talks about melancholy and new beginnings, memories suddenly coming back to life, and the impossible wish to hold on to one moment forever. It's a big, romantic premise, and it suits a band whose songs tend to swell into singalongs.

If you're new to them: singer Frederik Rabe and guitarist Finn Schwieters started Giant Rooks in 2014. The lineup grew to five with Jonathan Wischniowski on keys, Luca Göttner on bass and Finn Thomas on drums. At home the new album has them touring German halls like Leipzig's Haus Auensee and Berlin's Max-Schmeling-Halle, with a Barcelona date in January. The North American run is the other half of the album cycle, and an earlier headline tour here in 2024 helped build the audience it's playing to now.

Union Transfer is a good room to hear a band at this point. It opened on Sept. 21, 2011, a joint venture of The Bowery Presents and R5 Productions. The building at 1026 Spring Garden dates to 1889, when it was the Spring Garden Farmer's Market, and it still has some of that signage. Later it housed the Union Transfer baggage company that gave the venue its name, and for years after that it was a Spaghetti Warehouse, which plenty of Philadelphians still remember. Now it's one of the city's essential 1,200-cap rooms, big enough to feel like an event and small enough that the back of the floor isn't a different zip code.

A record four weeks old, played in a room built in 1889.

Saturday is a chance to hear new songs before they settle into a setlist, and to find out which ones the crowd already knows by heart. Learn a chorus or two from the new album before you go. Odds are the band will be watching to see who sings along.

Sources: Giant Rooks tickets – AXS (axs.com); Giant Rooks – 9:30 Club (930.com); Giant Rooks – Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Hear Giant Rooks’ New Single ‘The Big Night Out’ – uDiscover Music (udiscovermusic.com); Giant Rooks veröffentlichen ihr drittes Studioalbum – ms-aktuell (ms-aktuell.de); Giant Rooks – Tour 2026 – Haus Auensee Leipzig (MVP) (mvp.de); Giant Rooks – Tour 2026 – Max-Schmeling-Halle Berlin (MVP) (mvp.de); Giant Rooks – conciertos.club Barcelona (conciertos.club); Giant Rooks Plots 2024 North American Headline Tour – uDiscover Music (udiscovermusic.com); Union Transfer – Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Spaghetti Warehouse will become Union Transfer – Philadelphia Inquirer (inquirer.com); Union Transfer: Philadelphia’s Historic 1,200-Capacity Concert Hall – Thrillzing (thrillzing.com)