At Blue Monkey Bar, Cúp Học Thêm brought NC Huỳnh, Não Cá Vàng, Hành Tinh Xanh, Thức, and happyco. into one night that moved from soft, slow emotional layers toward a final explosion.
What made the night memorable was not any sudden turn, but the way the lineup was arranged like a long path of experience. Each artist and band held back a part of their energy; no one truly broke the atmosphere that had already been built. At times, that made the show’s pace feel slower than expected, especially when the timeline stretched a little. But it also made the audience move with the program as if they were passing through one emotional layer after another. And because the night had already traveled that far, the ending was happy. delivered felt perfectly timed.
NC HUỲNH: OPENING WITH CLOSENESS
NC Huỳnh fully played the role of an opener, melting away the silences at the start of the show. Without needing to force his way into the room’s attention, the set was still warm enough to pull people closer to the stage. What lingered most was the way he connected with the audience and the kind of energy that was friendly enough to soften the distance between performer and listener.
The melodies were catchy and springy, but they also carried real weight. The lyrics held onto enough personality, touching on personal concerns without letting the set drift into a routine warm-up. The audience singing along underneath during the final song, arms waving without stopping, did exactly what a good opening set should do: warm the venue, warm the ears, and leave behind the feeling that this night would lean more toward emotion than spectacle.
What worked so well was that NC Huỳnh did not open with sheer force. The set reached the crowd in a way that felt easy, energetic, and sincere all at once. For a night built around inward feeling, that was the right choice.
NÃO CÁ VÀNG: EXTENDING THE EMOTIONAL THREAD
If the opener heated up the room, then Não Cá Vàng were the band that kept that warmth from slipping away. Their set carried a clear alternative rock and pop rock spirit, but what stayed longer was the melody. These songs held a very direct emotional core, leaning heavily toward love, but never tipping into sentimentality or polish for its own sake. They felt like fragments of feeling told softly enough for listeners to piece them into their own stories.
This was also the point where the night’s overall character became clearer to me: everything moved through a fairly continuous mood. Não Cá Vàng widened the atmosphere in the best way possible. That had its strength because the set felt full and smooth, as if it carried an entire journey behind it, making me even more curious about where the night was headed. But the other side of that was that the show stayed in the same emotional register for longer.
Even so, there were still moments that stood out clearly. Under the lead guitarist’s technical hands, riffs arrived with real surprise, almost becoming the brightest point of the whole set. There were small shifts in motion, and the guitar solo in the final song did its work without demanding attention too aggressively. As the set went on, the crowd sank deeper into the melodies the band offered, especially because the band never tried to force anything into a dramatic peak. They simply let the songs open on their own. That is where Não Cá Vàng were at their best.
HÀNH TINH XANH: BUILDING SPACE FOR THE JOURNEY
The third set pushed the night deeper into the atmosphere. From the intro onward, the feeling leaned ambient, as if the sound were not hitting the room directly but spreading through it. It was not the kind of opening that makes the whole venue flare up at once. It was the kind that makes people slow down and pay closer attention to the air forming around them.
The layered sounds were beautiful, carrying a light shoegaze spirit. It felt as though the keyboard, the heavily reverbed guitars, and the space between the sounds were all working together to move the room somewhere else entirely. This was a set that drew me deeper into the spirit of the arrangement more than the lyrics. If you were waiting for a strong jolt, it could feel slow. But if you accepted its pace, the way each song guided its energy from softness toward eruption was enough to satisfy the ear.
THỨC: A SET THAT OPENED ANOTHER DOOR
Thức was where the night reached its deepest point. It felt like a meditation through music. Everything here pulled the listener back toward their own interior: Thức’s airy vocal delivery, the dense layers of meaning in the lyrics, and the way the songs never rushed, leaving listeners to sit with them.
This was a set rich in texture. The guitar licks had a sharpness of their own. They did not always follow the vocal line closely, but they appeared at exactly the right moments to open another layer of feeling. There were passages that felt as if they were lifting the listener upward, while also holding them inside the same unresolved thought. The lyrics remained the clearest strength. They were not simply “good” in the usual sense. They had enough depth to make you feel that behind every line there was still something left unsaid.
One of the things that made this set stand out was the way it touched something close to healing, or at least made people face their inner world more clearly. When the saxophone appeared in an unreleased single, the music almost opened into another dimension, something distinctly jazzy. Everything became more blurred, but also direct enough in content to create a perfect balance. Thức is an artist who draws the crowd into a state of mind that feels delicate and precise.
Still, it has to be said that, because Thức sustained a dynamic similar to what had already been built, the overall show did not fully burst with energy. For listeners waiting for sharper shifts, the middle stretch of the night could feel a little long. Even so, taken on its own, this was still a beautiful set from Thức.
HAPPYCO.: THE CLOSING HIT THE NIGHT REALLY NEEDED
And then happyco. arrived like the missing piece of the whole night.
After a show that had stayed fairly consistent in color and had not taken too many sharp turns, happyco. gave the crowd exactly what it needed. Not only louder or heavier sound, but also the feeling that everything had finally broken free from the tension built up before it. The crowd reacted almost immediately. Whatever remained of that held-back mental pressure, of the waiting, of the slight delay in the timeline, was pushed aside the moment happyco. began to accelerate.
The heavy riffs and forceful transitions drove the crowd from two-step movement into a pit that seemed to have been waiting for this exact moment all night. This was a set that made the body respond. Headbangs. Collisions. Movement. Everything suddenly became far more direct.
What made happyco. so effective was their position in the lineup. After the audience had already passed through all those softer, deeper, dreamier emotional layers, this ending delivered a very clear release. Instead of turning the show into one long, dramatic, exponential explosion, they gave the whole night a strong landing point.
Looking back, this was not a perfect show in terms of pacing, and the flow of the night did feel a little long at times. The colors of the bands sat fairly close to one another, so the overall dynamic was not always different enough to keep the entire room fully alert. But that is not the whole story.
Because despite all that, the night still held together as a complete emotional arc. It was long, and it was slow, but it still knew how to gather everything back at the final destination. And thanks to happyco., the ending was justified. It sent people out of the venue with the feeling that the night had finally landed exactly where it was supposed to.
Writing: Vương Gia Bảo
FULL GALLERY BY PHẠM KHANG
