While the crowds are off celebrating Fourth of July weekend with rocket pops and the Boston Pops, we’ve got it on good authority that a bit of jangle pop is the thing your weekend really needs. And wouldn’t you know it, Bellwire is returning to Boston just in time! After eight months on tour, the band finally makes its homecoming to Boston this Friday with a show at ONCE Somerville to celebrate the release of new EP Dog Thoughts.
Named after a poem by frontman Tyler Burdwood, Dog Thoughts jangles and pops as much as we’ve come to expect from Bellwire, but makes a few twists along the way. “The phrase [‘dog thoughts’] makes me think of raw thoughts, dark thoughts, uncivilized thoughts… stuff our minds usually prefer to filter out,” wrote Burdwood in an email to Allston Pudding.
The phrase doubles as the name of the album’s title track and biggest standout, which processes raw feeling by stacking darkly funny one-liners and hip hop name-dropping against a Lou Reed riff collapsing in on itself. “So today will be the day that I die– or if today’s not good for you, then I could reschedule,” spouts vocalist Tyler Burdwood. “I fuck the law, and the law makes no eye contact”. It’s a sonic red herring to open with, but while the songs that follow all have a brighter, more upbeat sound, it sets the album’s thematic approach with a wink.
“It’s also sort of a psychological starting place to work from,” wrote Burdwood. “I had been wanting to give Andy, our drummer at the time, a chance to flex his experimental improv skills. I also felt like I had a piece of writing that sort of fell between how I write lyrics and how I write poetry, so I wanted to try performing it in between how I read poetry and how I sing. And I wanted the band there to respond in real time. It’s the only track on the EP we recorded completely live– I’m yelling a little extra loud so that my band members can hear me.”
From there, the album falls into a more traditionally Bellwire-y groove, including fan favorite “Time Out”, followed by “Fleetwood Stakt”, now supported by a just-released music video capturing the band’s cross-country tour adventures.
Another twist on the band’s usual approach, “JAKL”, closes out the album with a chilled-out shuffle. It didn’t start off as a Bellwire song– it was actually written 7 years ago for a past band, but never recorded satisfactorily until the Dog Thoughts sessions. Burdwood explained that bringing the track back felt like the right way to bring balance to the record. “It never left our set because we’ve always liked playing it… The whimsicality of it is almost the opposite of our opening track, so I like that the EP starts in a dark place and ends in a lighthearted one.”
The show will also feature Boston pop-garage act Monkeys of a Bygone Era and the swashbucking New Hampshire punk of Jonee Earthquake Band, along with a crafting table courtesy of Spark & Fizz. Peep the details below, and check out the Facebook event here.
