7:41 PM: Everyone is a friend here, but I can’t escape the fact that I am the new friend arriving at a party of old friends.
Despite moving here mere months ago, I’ve observed enough shows to understand the undeniable local devotion surrounding Exploding in Sound, but newness still wafts from me like Allston garbage cans without their lids in the August sun. No, I was not there when [dearly departed EIS band] played [dearly departed basement venue] and [perennially drunk friend] lost his shirt again like the goddamned dingus that he is. And sure, I could just put #krillkrillkrillforever at the end of all of my Instagram posts tonight to make up for lost time, but I came to the first show of the “Thanks For Being A Friend” weekend to truly understand the insular, but ultimately welcoming world of becoming a EIS friend. Oh, and, as always, to find [perenially drunk friend]’s shirt because there is no way security will pardon a half-naked man that reeks of Rubinoff.
8:11 PM: I strike up a conversation with a guy wearing a Sat Nite Duets shirt, who, until that moment, I thought was a band that eluded most people on the East Coast besides my roommate. Upon talking further, I discover that this guy is a) the person that showed my roommate Sat Nite Duets and b) EIS superfan Hayden Karnitz that retweets all of the poop-related Krill tweets from over the years. I’m strangely relieved he is no longer a pissed off ‘90s child like his Twitter photo suggests.
9:01 PM: 2015 has been the year of everyone (finally) declaring their love of Palehound from the rooftops and, in this moment, I’ve decided I would absolutely join them if I wasn’t so intensely afraid of heights. Yes, “Molly” is a fuzzed out steamroller of a single and I’m overjoyed everyone is getting run over by it, but I think watching them play “Dry Food” live was my true moment of conversion. I get a cruel laugh out of watching mosh bros react when a band plays a couple slower songs live, but it’s infinitely better when an absolutely aching song like “Food” transfixes a room in wide-eyed awe. I’m considering asking if anyone knows of a roof no higher than seven feet that I can yell from.
10:01 PM: The lights noticeably flicker and dim from the electromagnetic disturbance of everyone at The Sinclair simultaneously tweeting, “What happened to Steve Hartlett’s guitar? #RIPOvlov.” Hartlett came armed with a guitar that had nearly half of its body severed, the frets practically hanging off the top like an overbite. Mangled instruments didn’t impede on Stove’s lightning fast, but pleasantly meandering set though, which included a feature from Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis and Hartlett’s bandmates (who also comprise the EIS band Washer) playing one of their band’s songs. Noticeably absent was a single Ovlov song for #EISmemories, but it appears the severance between Ovlov and Stove is even more distinct than Steve’s fucked up guitar.
10:33 PM – Stove close on a six minute droner where Harlett snaps not one, but two guitar straps, leaving him to hobble around the stage and attempt to keep hold of his guitar. They abruptly stop when Hartlett yells that “something smells like it’s burning” and exits the stage with a goofy wave. I am 90% sure I witnessed my spirit animal or a recreation of that “guy falls in the snow for 9 seconds” video with musical accompaniment.
10:59 PM – If idiocy could be measured like dream levels in Inception, I believe I have arrived at my third level:
1st level – I just made a reference to Inception in the year 2015. It was an okay movie as long as you didn’t pontificate on how “deep” it was. The memes were never funny.
2nd level – I bought a Jamaican meat patty between sets and, despite watching the shop owner reheat it to surface-of-sun level temperatures, I bit into it full force and burnt every tastebud I’ve ever had in my entire life.
3rd level – I’ve never given LVL UP a shot before tonight because I assumed any band named after a video game reference would have to play posi-jumping, Arizona-guzzling, snapback-wearing pop punk.
To be fair, having song titles like “Bro Chillers” and “Stoned Alone” don’t exactly defend pop punk their case, but seeing LVL UP live only cemented my multi-layered idiocy. After a couple blasts of their fuzzed out goodness, my burnt tastebuds and I contemplated leaving in shame. Then they played another song of fuzzy goodness and I almost forgot bad feelings entirely.
11:45 PM – I’m not looking to preach to “the youths of Allston” here, but sometimes, I’m just so damn happy I’ve avoided smoking this far into my life. I mean, yeah, I guess I’m missing that communal huddle outside the show and asking a stranger for a cigarette as a conversation starter, but I would’ve also missed the gloriousness that was Big Ups. Oh, and my lungs aren’t rotted out or whatever.
As roughly half the crowd is milling outside The Sinclair with their cigarettes, the New York punk outfit is putting on the night’s most blistering set. As one of the newer adds to Exploding’s roster, Big Ups slightly divert away from the label’s penchant for lo-fi-born slacker rock, but no one inside is complaining. Big Ups’s only commonality with fellow EIS bands is singer Joe Galarraga’s occasional monotone murmur of a voice, but that often unfolds into a throaty scream as he paces heatedly across the stage. The fact that they call themselves “punctual punk” seems like it carries an air of sarcasm, but showing up late to this band feels like a truly vital mistake.
12:40 AM – Do we honestly need to review Krill anymore? When they made an ironic anthem about being a band forever despite being on the cusp of breaking up… and then not breaking up after all, they were a good band. When they compared themselves to a turd getting flushed down a toilet, everyone was like, “shut up, Krill, you are good at what you do and we want to know where Jonah bought his dog jacket.” I’m pretty sure every writer at AP has given their respective copies of A Distant Fist Unclenching a tender smooch at least a few times since it arrived earlier this year. And when Krill played a handful of brand new songs during their headlining set…you guessed it, they were pretty good. I understand the worship of Krill in Allston can become a bit overpowering, but I also understand I will probably never be able to see them perform “Tiger” without doing a half air drumming, half “I need to use the bathroom” dance. Krill is good. That’s it. That’s all.
1:10 AM – It’s drizzling softly on my ride home, baptizing me in my newly validated EIS friendship. I can’t pretend I witnessed their full history in Boston, but I understand why Exploding In Sound’s history has become storied here. The explanation’s in Steve’s broken guitar straps as much as it is in each band’s technical prowess. It’s also in the circles of crowd members between sets trading show stories with enough passion to make you feel like you didn’t miss a moment of it, even if you were never there to begin with. Simply put, it’s a scene inventing a new pinnacle yearly that the rest of the country is finally starting to pay attention to. The bands that comprise Exploding In Sound aren’t a boastful or ego-heavy bunch; they’re your neighbors that happen to play really, really great music.
And with a weekend of offerings as stacked as Exploding In Sound’s, being a friend has never felt so rewarding.