Poster by Raymond Fernandez
Cult Fiction lives and breathes Allston. They also definitely breathe weed. Needless to say, when we heard the band was kicking off a tour with fellow locals, Gravel, we knew we had to set something up.
Channel your forgotten as well as regrettable angst in our session with Cult Fiction below (we are not responsible for any second-hand high as a result of watching) and catch them on tour this month:
Michelle Branch lived hard and fast in just five, formative years. She wrote an album at 17, dropped a chart-topping single a month after her 18th birthday, and was consequently plunged into the world of TLR and money-hungry music labels. At 21, she married her 40 year-old bandmate. By age 22, they had a kid together. And now, at 33, the singer-songwriter still allows that era to inform her identity– but those teen pop artist days don’t own her.
Fast-forward 14 years, and Branch identifies as many things apart from a teen superstar. She’s a divorcee, a Grammy winner, a young mom, a hopeless romantic. When she picks up the phone one afternoon in July, she’s off-duty in Omaha, Nebraska, doing laundry and phone interviews.
“I got out of my record contract in June of 2014, and basically started writing immediately after that,” she says about the songs that would contribute to her first solo album in 14 years, Hopeless Romantic. “I was newly divorced, newly dropped from my label, and suddenly had a lot to write about.”
That doesn’t mean that Branch hasn’t been writing music in the meantime, however. In 2006, she defied Warner Bros. Records and collaborated with Jessica Harp to form country pop duo, The Wreckers. Of course, in the eyes of Warner Bros. who were “salivating for another song on TRL” and still trying to hold Branch to her five pop album contract, a country collab was too high risk. They didn’t go for it.
“I financed it myself,” says Branch. “The more that people pushed back about it, the more I wanted to do it. The more it pissed me off.”
One Country Music Award music award, a number-one country single, and two shelved solo albums later, Branch was slowly, but surely, reclaiming her musical identity. “I think the pressure of having everyone seeing me as their money-making teen pop artist was making me want to rebel and go in any direction,” she says. Fortunately, Branch was able to steer that direction straight into her music.
But it turns out, being stuck at that major label machine, and every misogynist that comes with it, had Branch saying ‘no’ a lot– in uncomfortable scenarios, like “a [program director] putting their hand on your ass, or being at a studio where someone’s clearly hitting on you,” and to making disingenuous pop music.
“My advice is to stand your ground,” Branch says.
This mindset sparked the beginning of a bonafide rock record: Hopeless Romantic, which came out in April. A fateful meeting with producer (and now, finance) Patrick Carney of The Black Keys fame at a 2016 Grammy party sealed the deal and launched Branch’s visions of a rock album into fruition. The inspiration for her new sound, she says, came from other badass women in the music industry right now. Her current obsessions include Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski, and she names Tegan & Sara, HAIM, and Jenny Lewis among her biggest influences when making the new record. She even sought out her touring guitarist Megan McCormick after she saw her play for Jenny Lewis.
“I’m so, so happy that, when you come see the show, not only to have two women in my band, but to also have a female-fronted opener,” Branch stresses. She recognizes that people often pit women against each other in the music business (and, let’s be honest, in every other business). After all, reporters still seem to constantly include Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch in the same breath, not to mention their fake feud. Speaking to this, and to the reason why Branch plays with a lot of women, is a simple belief: “We’re stronger standing up for each other.”
With that in mind, plus a personal narrative of love and heartbreak, a Mellotron, a Fender VI, a 100 year-old Victorian house in Silver Lake, Michelle Branch and her band were reborn.
What people might not realize, however, is that the making of Hopeless Romantic was Branch’s first time recording independently since 2000, when she self-produced her first album, Broken Bracelet. While working with John Shanks on The Spirit Room (2001) and Hotel Paper (2003), and then John Leventhal on The Wreckers’ album, Branch says she was never encouraged to play her own parts. Branch confesses, “I always felt intimidated playing around them.”
So when Carney handed her an electric guitar to record the 14 songs that make up Hopeless Romantic, Branch was terrified.
“It was the first time I’d ever had anyone encourage me to do that,” she says. “As I got more comfortable with Patrick, I felt like it was a safe place to actually try shit.”
“Trying shit” a.k.a getting partially back to her DIY roots has produced a totally new, but oddly familiar Michelle Branch. While people loved her first two albums dearly, Branch was never an artist fans really got to grow with. Alt music fans are used to following local bands from crowded house shows, to headlining places like Great Scott, The Middle East, eventually The Sinclair, and just maybe, bigger venues like Royale and House of Blues. We actually witness the growth of these artists.
With Hopeless Romantic, and a slew of intimate North American shows and European festivals alike, Branch is reclaiming this rite of passage– one performance at a time.
See Michelle Branch with openers HAERTS at the Paradise tomorrow, Wednesday August 9th. Get your tickets here. Listen to Hopeless Romantic via Spotify below.
Palm, Palberta, and Horse Jumper of Love. It’s the type of bill more likely to garner a monosyllabic curse word response than a casual “oh yeah, I saw them once.” And a warm, dry, night in late July was the perfect setting for this storm of a show to descend upon us.
If you haven’t seen Horse Jumper of Love yet, you’re doing something wrong. While a little quieter than most, their recent set at Great Scott featured all of the staples one should expect, including: bass player John Margaris’ microphone feedback while the sound engineer tried to adjust for the very intentional vocal placement, drummer Jamie Vadala-Doran staring at his cymbals the way you wish your lover would stare at you, and vocalist Dimitri Giannopoulos mumbling the most genuine thanks you’ll hear from a band. Throughout the night, the trio graced the crowd with quite a few new tracks, including some longer, more drawn out compositions from their upcoming record. 8 Mile played on TVs in the back. It was a jolly ol’ time.
I’ll admit that I came to Palberta’s set completely blind to what they were about. But I heard a voice in the crowd sum them up to a friend before their set, saying, “Oh yeah, they’re great, weird and all but they switch all their instruments a lot!” And while every member did indeed play each instrument at one point or another, if that’s all you took away from their set then you didn’t pay attention. Palberta did an excellent job of giving listeners a refresher they didn’t know they needed. They provided a heavy dose of quick tunes that gave potent nods to no-wave and other aggressive musical movements, and it was impressive was how well they paid attention to the negative space in their songs. If a song is a sculpture of sound, then silence is as important as the notes themselves. The balance between overabundant dissonance and elongated silence is an oft forgotten craft, leaving plenty of concert-goers unprepared for the amount of respect and attention the music requires, and transforming the less attentive into positive hecklers who “WOOHOO” at every available silence. In addition to winning the crowd over with their well spaced music, Palberta intrigued fans with an unusual guest; one of band members was lucky enough to have her 97-year-old grandfather in attendance. Seated in the front row, he sat respectfully listening to his granddaughter’s set in its entirety, making him one of few who can claim to have both lived through WWII and seen a Palberta show.
Next up was Palm, whose latest record, Shadow Expert, has been out just long enough to give it many good listens, and if you’re like me, fully appreciate the album from front to back. But unlike Palberta who drove into sonic experimentalism by ways of harsh confrontations, Palm mirrored that energy with the polar opposite output of pure bliss and groove. Their performance captivated everybody in the room, hypnotizing them to move in unison while also leaving everybody asking themselves what the hell was going on. While they played, listeners attempted to follow the melodies and beats, which was not an easy task, but definitely one worth trying. After each song the crowd was buzzing with people audibly saying “wow,” and by the end Palm more than lived up to my initial reaction over the lineup.
A few months ago, I asked a friend of mine what the definition of Art Rock was, and after a long moment of silence the only way she could define the genre in its most relevant form was with one word: Palm. And after this performance, I think they proved worthy of the title.
Palm performing “Walkie Talkie”
The line to see All Time Low started on Landsdowne Street by the Green Monster, and from there it swung around the corner of the Cask ‘n Flagon, all the way to the end of the newly dubbed “David Ortiz” bridge. Sports fans decked out in Red Sox gear offered a strong contrast to the music fans with blue hair wearing ripped jeans, band tees, and flannels despite the summer heat. And while none of this was uncommon for a show at the House of Blues, it marked a big shift for the Oakland rockers, SWMRS.
Formed in 2004 under the name The Raining Souls, the band went through several name changes before settling on SWMRS in 2015. And like their name, SWMRS’ music has gone through several transformations in that time. Their first album was compared to the early work of Green Day (perhaps as a result of Billie Joe Armstrong’s son Joey being the band’s drummer), while their later music veered from punk rock to pop punk when the band joined the Vans Warped Tour lineup. In 2015, SWMRS returned to their roots and entered the recording studio with Zac Carper, vocalist of California punk rock group FIDLAR. Carper would act as producer of what would become the band’s third studio album, Drive North. After touring with Wavves and Twin Peaks in 2015, SWMRS hit the road again in 2016 with FIDLAR, fully embracing their punk rock side. Now opening for pop punk legends All Time Low, it’s clear SWMRS hasn’t forgotten their Warped Tour fans or completely moved on from their pop punk days.
Opening act The Wrecks hopped on stage around 7:00pm, playing a quick 20-minute set, finishing with a loud and wild jam reminiscent of a Rock Band ending bonus. Waterparks went on around 7:45pm, revving the crowd up another notch despite not having a bass player. Half way through their set, vocalist Awsten Knight led the crowd in a mock encore, sharing his observation on how “really good bands” always leave stage for a minute before returning for more, and then proceeded to do so.
By 8:15pm the crowd was getting antsy. Roadies carefully swapped out Waterparks’ slick yellow and professionally painted bass drum for SWMRS’ grungy Ludwig, simply adorned with neon tape spelling out their name. With their instruments set up and the sound check completed, SWMRS finally walked on stage around 8:30pm. Vocalist Cole Becker grinned at the crowd as he strutted out in a black polka-dot dress and a string of pearls around his neck, and the band launched into a dramatic arrangement of “Palm Trees.” Cole’s brother, guitarist Max Becker, dominated the left side of the stage as he climbed on the speakers and jumped high into the air. Though slightly more reserved, bass player Seb Mueller’s performance was equally entertaining as he stalked the right side of the stage dressed in a snazzy black and red plaid suit. And despite being mostly hidden behind his drum kit, Armstrong’s playing was loud and clear, and he earned brownie points from the crowd for wearing Red Sox shirt.
SWMRS didn’t take long to breakout their hit single “Miley,” a tribute to popstar Miley Cyrus, putting it just third on their setlist. Like with “Palm Trees,” SWMRS added a twist to “Miley,” but instead of changing the music, the band paused several times for Cole to share their thoughts on the world. During these frequent interruptions, Cole urged the crowd to “wake the fuck up” because “the moment you realize the future belongs to you the better off we’ll be in 10 years.” He also thanked the security for their work (and moms for being everyone’s first “security”), ensured that the show was a safe space for everyone, and yelled “Fuck Trump” over the president’s recent ban against transgender in the military. Other highlights from their set included “D’You Have a Car?,” “Figuring It Out,” and “Drive North,” the band’s hometown anthem and the final song of the night. During “Drive North,” Cole shouted about his disdain for Southern California, singing, “I hate L.A.” and playfully adding “I hate the Yankees” to his list of loathing.
The band stomped off stage around 9:30pm with no encore, leaving the crowd wanting more. With their set concluded, SWMRS proved they’re comfortable straddling the line between punk rock and pop punk. Whether opening for FIDLAR or All Time Low, SWMRS puts on a damn good show that will satisfy all of your punk music needs.
Hailing from New York City, Yucky Duster brought an energy into our dusty, masculinized, workout dungeon that we did not know was attainable.
From short intricate guitar riffs to each member of the band rotating on vocals, Yucky Duster keeps their listeners on their toes with excitement of what’s to come next.
Their lyrics speak to most twenty-somethings who might have seen Frances Ha a few too many times but bring a fresh bluntness that is the opposite of forced and tiring. Watch Yucky Duster work out and play a new single for us below:
Sometimes an album so brutally and emotionally honest hits you straight into the gut. We’ve had the pleasure of experiencing that twice this year with Waxahatchee‘s Out in the Storm and Palehound‘s A Place I’ll Always Go. Both albums deal with loss in their own special way. Katie Crutchfield is fueled by it, punching out songs of arena rock potential throughout Out in the Storm. The album opener “Never Been Wrong” cuts deep right away. She’s sick of the subject’s bullshit and ready to tell the world about it on tour. Ellen Kempner of Palehound deals with her loss on a separate level, grappling with the loss of a friend and a family member and trying to find all the words and metaphors to make it feel like she can make it out okay. There’s optimism in both Crutchfield and Kempner, so these albums can be set on repeat for days without leaving you feeling hopeless.
We’re oh so excited to be co-presenting their show together with Outer Spaces at Royale with Bowery Boston, that we’re doing a giveaway for you! Enter below for a chance to win a pair of tickets to the show on Saturday August 19 along with a copy of Waxahatchee’s Out in the Storm on CD (to be picked up at the show)
Waxahatchee with Palehound and Outer Spaces
Saturday August 19, 2017
Royale
279 Tremont St.
Boston, MA 02116
doors 6pm | 18+ | $16 adv, $18 dos
Tickets | Facebook event
Tonight, we have quite the ripper planned at Great Scott. Canadian pals, Partner and New Swears will be joining local pop punk favorites, Elephants and Birdwatching.
Since we are antsy as heck for the gig, we are premiering Birdwatching’s new track, “Duckface” from their EP to be release at the end of this week.
Enjoy and be sure to GTTG! Doors are at 9:00 pm and tickets are $10.
Photo by Shervin Lainez
If you are one of the 100,000+ students living in this city, I feel like you should not be able to consider yourself a Bostonian unless you have spent a full summer here. With a third of its population returning to their hometowns until classes begin again, Boston’s entire character changes from June through September. The streets are noticeably emptier. The city is quieter and almost provincial. There is a sense of impatience and/or dread underlying everything—impatience for the humidity to finally subside; dread for when the line outside of every bar inevitably reforms. Despite how refreshing it is to see one third less puke on the sidewalks each Sunday morning, it is basically impossible to not feel hopelessly lonely when thousands of people have evacuated your home.
The perpetual cycle of inhabitants is what sets Boston apart from every other mid-size city on the East Coast; this has to be one of the only cities in America whose permanent residents can sometimes feel like leftovers for an entire season. With all of the love I hold in my heart for Boston, I respect anyone with the strength to live here through each passing summer in their post-academic life. Several years ago, members of the band Palehound did just that.
In the summer of 2015, Palehound released Dry Food, their debut record. The album retained the personality and intimacy of frontperson Ellen Kempner’s 2013 debut EP, Bent Nail. The EP displayed Kempner’s knack for balancing the achingly poetic with the embarrassingly relatable, mainly by discussing the struggle to deal with a newfound adulthood catalyzed by heartbreak and moving out of your parent’s home. Dry Food announced Palehound as a specifically Boston band, with songs that reference small Massachusetts towns like Seekonk and a uniquely northeastern sound that can be simultaneously loud, fun, and unfathomably melancholic.
In the summer of 2015, between my sophomore and junior years of college, I moved into my first apartment. It was a basement-level unit with exactly two windows—one in my bedroom, at street level, through which people would kick dirt and leaves through the missing screen, and one in the living room that looked out to a mysterious alleyway with no other point of entry. The apartment also boasted plumbing pipes that snaked the ceiling of every room. Any time someone in the building would flush a toilet or turn on the shower, a gentle whoosh would fly through the pipes—a comforting reminder of life outside of my cold, dark cave.
Technically, I was not alone; my roommates were my best friends, but they also happened to have opposite work schedules from mine. Seeing as all but a handful of my friends from school went home for the summer and I was living 1,000 miles from my own home in the suburbs of Chicago, I spent a lot of time by myself in my room. Once August rolled around, I spent a lot of time by myself in my room listening to Dry Food.
Kempner singing “I only feel half right around healthier folk” over a slow, sunny guitar eased my loneliness more than my neighbors flushing their toilets ever had. The album filled my semi-squalid apartment with life and reminded me, as corny as it sounds, that I can create a home outside of the one I grew up in.
Now two years later, I’ve graduated, and the overwhelming majority of my close friends have moved out of Boston: this time for good. Once again, I am still here and feeling alone in the bumble of the city. And coincidentally, Palehound has a new album out.
Palehound’s latest album, A Place I’ll Always Go, chronicles love, loss, and the devastating struggle to reconcile both experiences. At the risk of cheapening the beautiful and tragic content of the album, it’s probably best listened to while trying to ignore your swamp ass on the 66 bus. Songs like “Carnations” and “Room” detail the search for comfort in spite of your insecurities and anxieties, and Kempner’s whispery voice over a slow and steady beat is not unlike finding serenity in bus air conditioning on a humid day. The poppiness of “If You Met Her” and “Flowing Over” in contrast to the tragedy present in their lyrics evokes a blistering heat. The album is ultimately optimistic, yet still a little hard to swallow.
Kempner’s lyrics illustrate the need to feel normal or, at the very least, simply survive in the face of depression and alienation. Like every other feeling, these are intensified in the summer when you’re expected to be outside, basking in the beautiful, albeit humid, weather despite the fact that all you want to do is curl up in a ball and never see the sun again. It’s very hard to spend an entire day in bed when you have a busted AC.
Recently, listening to A Place I’ll Always Go while walking to work, I felt an unsettling moment of emotional parallel within my life. I feel exactly the same as I did two years ago. This is upsetting; if I have to be feeling emotional distress, at least let it be novel. I am trying to grapple with the fact that I will always feel good and I will always feel bad and those are the breaks of being a person. Palehound’s way of continually demonstrating how to find optimism in the face of devastation is a field guide to resilience. Everything is cyclical. We will all find love, and we will all experience some form of loss. For better or worse, the students of Boston will move back in. We are lathering, rinsing, and repeating for the rest of our lives. There will always be another summer to try it all over again.
Palehound plays with Waxahatchee and Outer Spaces at Royale on Saturday August 19
Tickets are available here, and you can RSVP on our Facebook event here.
You don’t need to look very far back in Newport Folk Fest’s history to know it is a place of community and political speech.
Just think about last year’s headliner, Patti Smith, imploring many generations to stick together and fight tyrannical powers. The performance came on the heels of then-candidate Donald Trump’s official nomination as his party’s presidential candidate. Patti Smith’s words then feel prescient today. Hoisting her guitar in the air, she said: “THIS IS THE ONLY FUCKING WEAPON WE NEED. DON’T GIVE UP. LOVE ONE ANOTHER, MOTHERFUCKERS!”
Now, six months into what will be a four-to-eight-year-long nightmare, Newport Folk Fest feels more vital than ever, both as an escape from reality and because it will motivate its festival goers to at least ponder their place and encourage them to participate.
One area where political speech will be made is the Speak Out set on the main stage Sunday. Billed as “A very special set to celebrate an artist’s freedom to write songs that reflect the times in which he/she lives,” there’s not much to go on.
Justin Vernon of Bon Iver has tweeted on multiple occasions he will be playing with both Hiss Golden Messenger (Grandma’s Hands Band) and folk legend John Prine, who is headlining the festival. Would it make sense for Vernon, an outspoken political voice, to show up and play a few songs during Speak Out? Yes. Will it happen? Who knows.
(There is also an “unannounced” set on Sunday. Don’t get your hopes up: Vernon is not playing that set.)
Returning to headline the festival they first played at years ago, Fleet Foxes play Friday evening. Regina Spector, Ben Gibbard, and the Head and the Heart also join the day’s lineup.
Wilco headlines Saturday. Offa Rex, which is a collaboration between Olivia Chaney and The Decemberists happens on Saturday. The Avett Brothers also somehow make an appearance that day. (Saturday always feels like the pick of the weekend, but it’s almost mind-bendingly stacked.) Angel Olsen also returns to the Fort to play songs from the acclaimed album MY WOMAN.
Pinegrove. Pinegrove. Pinegrove. Pinegrove. Pinegrove. Pinegrove. Pinegrove. Pinegrove. Pinegrove. Pinegrove.
(The band plays Sunday afternoon on the smallest outdoor stage.)
Whitney’s Light Upon the Lake was one of the big releases of last year, and the band’s festival circuit runs through Newport on Saturday.
Big Thief’s and L.A. Salami’s sets on Friday have some overlap, but it’s worth trying to catch as much of each set as possible.
It would be remiss to omit some of the area’s great folk scene from this roundup.
The unfortunately named Beantown Throwdown features the Hub’s very own Ballroom Thieves, Tall Heights and Ryan Montbleau. All of the artists hail from the City on a Hill, or the City of Champions. Titletown. Furthermore, the Athens of America and things of that nature.
Newport Folk Fest promises to be yet another success. One indicator: it once again sold out without a single artist being named. Another indicator: on paper, it’s a diverse lineup with something for every folk fan.
One thing that could potentially put a damper on proceedings: rain. There’s a lot of it in the forecast (though, just days ago it was looking even more dire than it is as of this writing). Compared with last year’s sweltering heat, the temperature will be a bit more favorable. Pray for sun, though.
Newport Folk Festival, Fort Adams State Park, Friday, July 28-Sunday, July 20. See the full lineup here.