By Tanvi Shah

“I’ve been traveling a lot, but Boston is my favorite city. Somerville, Cambridge, Dorchester, Medford — It’s all for me.” — Amir Rivera

Amir Rivera is no stranger to the Boston music scene. Born and raised in Cambridge, Amir’s identity became “the music kid” in high school. Throughout the years, Amir has embraced his cultural identity in a unique way, expressing both his Jewish and Hispanic sides through his music. “Cambridge was a melting pot of cultures to grow up in. Cambridge is home,” Amir said while recounting how the range of sounds from his friends’ houses exposed him to music around the world and ultimately influenced his original music.

Amir has been in a lot of different bands and genres during his artist journey — Los Elk, which is indie rock, Coyote Island, which is psychedelic indie music, in addition to Amir playing around with hip-hop beats and enjoying a good jam band session. So it’s no wonder that Amir describes his solo, original music as genre-fluid. 

His debut album (title pending) features 11 tracks that he’s written throughout the years. The album is a reminder to himself that he hasn’t abandoned his earlier songs. Now, it’s their moment to shine. “I want people to think about love when they hear the album.” Amir’s songs capture different aspects of love and loss as concepts. The album follows the arc of falling in love, being in love, and falling out of love while appreciating the different types of love throughout. The album has a “modern sentiment” to it, but not that “LA shiny pop,” as Amir vehemently asserted during our conversation. The album has many different vibes to it — singer-songwriter, RnB, alt-rock, indie, some folk, and even some psychedelic elements.

Amir’s show at the Rockwood in Fenway was titled “The Cambridge Takeover” not only because Cambridge is home to Amir, but also because both supporting acts had ties to the Cambridge and Boston areas. Connis and Amir went to highschool together, and nellie and Amir first met at a local music show in the area. Amir wanted his friends to play alongside him and wanted to share the stage with people he admires, respects, and is a fan of.

This show was a “musical chairs of a set” according to Amir, highlighting 6 different musical ideas that flowed into one another. The show started with Connis’ DJ set that geared us up with some grooving beats for what was to come. 

nellie is a friend of mine who started her music journey here in Boston, and I love seeing her perform and seeing how much she’s grown as a person and an artist. She started off with a sad tune called “Acquaintances” about a friendship breakup, the lyrics of which break your soul: “Everyone used to feel like family, but now they’re just strangers like you and me.” nellie also played her next single, “Garden,” about her annoying neighbor who lived across from her in her upper-west-side apartment. There’s also going to be an accompanying music video for the song and I am SO ready to see it! nellie ended her set with a cover of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” with some lovely harmonies from Amir. “I love nellie’s voice. Her lyrics are so poignant, and we love singing together!” Amir said about having nellie open for him.

Connis came back to the stage after nellie’s set and proceeded to wow us with his earnest lyrics and vulnerability over his tracks. “Connis is someone I admire for his community-building, beats, and he’s so raw and so himself. We’ve been bouncing songs off each other since we were in highschool,” reminisced Amir when talking about having Connis on the lineup. 

Next to the stage (again) was Amir. This part was the solo set, where Amir sang his original songs, including an unreleased song “Volcano.” The lyric that stuck with me from another of his original songs was “Someday you’ll be home again,” and Amir had this incredible falsetto when he sang his original lyric, “Right now you’re not here” that will live in my head rent-free for a while.

Then came the jam-band session, where Amir and his band — Aidan on bass and Jesse on drums — jammed out and had a blast on stage. I haven’t heard bass played like that. I was stunned. Aidan got funky on us, which he indicated by turning his hat backwards.  With the amazing sound quality at Rockwood, I could hear every shred on Amir’s electric guitar and every beat on the drums…it was fucking great! They ended their jam session with a jammy song and then revealed to us that they had one rehearsal. Once Amir heard the first 3 notes of the other two players, he knew they were good for their set at Rockwood. “That’s what it’s like playing with talented musicians,” Amir said about his band.

The final part of the show included Connis coming back up on stage in a snazzy vest. and Amir, the band, and Connis performing live versions of Connis’ rap songs, including “SPF 30” and “Lost Touch.” Connis mentioned that Aidan has the BEST facial expressions while playing, which I am inclined to agree with. Amir and Connis had been talking about having a live band behind Connis’ music for 4 years, and they were happy it could finally come to fruition. Anyone could visibly tell that Amir and Connis have been performing together for years from the way they interacted with each other on stage.  I have so many videos from the last section of this set. 

The words that come to my mind to describe it are “energizing, powerful, stunned at the talent, and complete.” Some of Connis’ lyrics that resonated with me were “I wanna know how it feels to lose it all” and “I waste so much Goddamn time, but it stays on my mind.” I have never seen someone be so into their music — there were some electric guitar solos where Amir just shredded and shredded, and it was almost like he got lost in the moment in a way I didn’t know was possible. Amir’s guitar solos especially highlighted his cultural influences.  At the end of their set, Amir and Connis did the typical “Okay, we’re going to act like we’re going to walk off the stage, but we have one more for you.” Despite them letting us know it was happening, we did yell “encore encore encore” as if we didn’t know they were coming back on stage.

The 6 musical ideas of the show put me through a full range of emotions, and I’m glad they did. Amir showcased his versatility of what it means to be an artist. He showed us that he is a guitarist, a singer-songwriter, a producer, a rock-and-roller at heart, a collaborator, an artist, everything. When asked who he’d like to collaborate with in the Boston music scene, Amir automatically answered Ry, whose songwriting he really admires, and Amanda Shea, a wordsmith and legend in the Boston scene.

Amir is excited about releasing his solo music. The album is mostly self-produced with Matt Peiffer as the Mixing Engineer and Chedda of Shifted Recording as the co-producer for two songs. “This album is for me and for the public. It’s for my friends, family, future family, and anyone who connects with it.” Amir will be launching a GoFundMe to support his album, so be on the lookout. While you’re waiting (impatiently, like me) for the album to come out, you can listen to his Spotify playlist, “The COMPLETE Amir Rivera.” It’s representative of Amir’s versatility and music collection while supporting all the other artists Amir has worked with.