Mannequin Pussy is a band that’s both explosive and soft, with songs that speak beyond boundaries. One moment vocalist and guitarist Marisa Dabice is screeching urgently about feelings of crushing loneliness on songs like “Kiss,” and the next we hear her in full grunge rock mode, playfully singing about a bff on “Emotional High.” Truly versatile, bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford, guitarist Thanasi Paul, and drummer Kaleen Reading accomplish so many different sounds on their most recent album, Romantic, it’s no wonder they’re getting booked on the bills of international festivals only months after the release of the late 2016 effort.
With raving reviews from big-name publications like NPR and Pitchfork, this band is going places like, soon. Ya might wanna see them at an intimate venue like the Lilypad so years later you can brag about that time you and 50 other people moshed at a Mannequin Pussy show.
Before the band embarks on a nearly month-long European tour in May, we caught up with Marisa Dabice with just a couple questions about life on the road.
Allston Pudding: What’s your current favorite blastin’ down the highway banger?
Mannequin Pussy: Fortune 🔮 The Marked Men. That whole album makes me wanna drive fast but I don’t because I really like to take risks in cars.
AP: Can you name some bands/musicians you’re currently vibin’ on?
MP: I’ve been listening to the second Strokes record (Room on Fire) a lot again recently – Guess what? It’s still a masterpiece! I also like that new Crying record.
AP: Can you some bands/musicians you hope are vibin’ on you?
MP: I heard RuPaul gets hyped on MP.
AP: What is the raddest perk you’ve gotten for playing a show (i.e. beer from the bar, sick plate of tacos, etc.)?
MP: I got a nice pair of headphones from a record store once that was nice. I recently broke them though 🙁 So if you know any shows that are giving away nice stuff please send them our way.
AP: When someone farts in the van when you’re on tour, what’s the protocol for handing The Situation?
Is the phrase “Hometown Heroes” a bit…football-y in this context? Regardless, there’s no other way to jointly describe the bands playing the Middle East this Saturday: Mini Dresses, Vundabar AND Horse Jumper of Love (presented by us and our dear friends at Coach & Sons). The reality that all three will be in the same space is nothing short of a local soft punk’s dream. For that, we strongly advise your to get to the (wait for it…) GIG.
However, we at AP are well aware of how often you’re asked to do this. Getting to any gig requires putting on pants, snagging a ticket and even engaging in slight social interaction. That said, these are three absolute gems that we know you’re proud to call local, despite how busy they may be (Vundabar and Horse Jumper are on tour this spring). Simply put, this bill is stacked, but for further convincing here’s a track from each band to remind you:
“Sad Eyes” – Mini Dresses
The title track of this Somerville duo’s fall 2016 EP is truly top-notch shoe gaze wonder. Not only are harmonies warm and guitar lines bright, but the recording–which was done in a kitchen–is almost perfectly airy. The track takes plenty of soft turns that are perfect for daydreaming about anything: the beach, the mountains, The Middle East this Saturday night.
“Ugly Brunette” – Horse Jumper of Lover
This song has the power to shrivel us up into emotionally tired raisins. That’s right: Raisins, and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s simple guiding guitar line almost listens like chimes, fading in and out, reminding us how lonely we pretend not to be. That said, it’s okay to cry public, and it’s important to here this song live. Prepare yourself by hecking out this new Audiotree performance of “Ugly Brunette.”
“Shuffle” – Vundabar
Vundabar’s Gawk is still ringing in our ears from summers’ past, and the album’s closer is also our closing argument. The swinging, accelerating outro is a testament to the band’s songwriting but is also a reminder of how truly “into it” Vundabar gets in the live setting. We suggest listening via their music video, which released last month and was directed by frontman Brandon Hagen. It conveys a goofy sort of sadness that we relate to, and therefore love, in our very own Vundabar.
Vundabar, Mini Dresses and Horse Jumper of Love play the Middle East 4/8. Doors are at 8 p.m. All ages admitted.
Haasan Barclay has been quickly rising through the ranks of Boston’s hip-hop scene, both as a producer and a solo artist, constructing songs that don’t limit themselves to solitary genre labels. His 2016 debut Heaven Is Your Last Dream gave us our first chance to hear what he can do when given more room to flaunt his impeccable ear for sound selection. Since then, he hasn’t missed a beat, continuing to release and produce music, as well as popping up on some features for other local artists.
Now, he’s back to release his new track “Deep Blue Sea” with frequent collaborator and local hip-hop favorite Michael Christmas. The track sounds like the logical next step for Barclay: he’s only gotten sharper with his production techniques over time, honing in on the depth of sound that accentuates his lyrics of isolation. The song opens with a synthesizer that calls back to the 8-bit beeps of early video game consoles like Super Nintendo, an example of the singer’s wide-ranging influences. In the track’s lyrical narrative, Barclay’s perspective is from inside a bubble in the sea, removed from the “snakes” and “sharks” that “think they know [him].” What separates this from similar sentiments expressed in isolationist R&B is Barclay’s commitment to his metaphors, in this case, the vast, cold expanse of undersea life.
Halfway through the song, Michael Christmas steps into the fray in his typical nonchalant fashion, taking his chance to add his unique tongue-in-cheek wordplay to the metaphor Barclay has established. He takes Barclay’s snakes and sharks, lumping them in with “lions, tigers [and] bears” and telling us to look at him “like [he’s] the wizard.”It’s moments like this that show us these two artists have developed a strong rapport after multiple collaborations and learned how to play off each other well. Here’s top hoping that they’ll keep working together in the future!
To follow up this track’s premiere, Barclay has a visual release in the works, as well as upcoming performances at the Boston En Masse one-day festival at ONCE Ballroom on 4/29, with Trap Music Orchestra at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory in June and at the Great Scott with Ed Balloon on 6/29. These Boston shows would be a great chance to check out Haasan’s live show before he moves to New York to enter the next stage of his career. Michael Christmas has a string of tour dates lined up for April and May, which you can see on his Facebook page. He’ll play the Sinclair in Cambridge on 4/21.
I’m in front of a coffee chain that Sidney Gish is not at.
A middle aged couple in khaki zip-offs walk by. It’s late February and everything is wrong.
This is the second location of said coffee chain I’ve biked to, failing to specify the exact location near Fenway that Sidney and I were going to meet. Even after the sun set, the temperature hangs in the upper 60s. A delivery truck weaves a little too leisurely into my lane. I assume the driver is consumed by the fact that they got to break out short sleeve uniforms so early this year. I silently forgive them and keep biking.
I reject the custom as a New Englander to put shorts on at the absolute first sign of warmth each year, but I am an island in my black jeans. I begin to imagine a Greek god of New England, smiting me with poor directions and double parked cars in my bike lane for being so out of step with the rest of the city’s exposed calves.
I recognize I’m using absurdity to hide the fact that I’m just bad at making plans, but it feels like the kind of thought process that would find solace in one of Sidney Gish’s songs. I forget to bring it up when we finally meet at the third location, but it’s fine; Sidney has more than enough odd observations of the universe stockpiled from making her first proper full-length album.
“I stayed up all night. My sleep schedule went to absolute shit over that winter break,” Gish recalls, mimicking a catatonic stare at the floor. “I put the album up at 7 AM and, later that morning, my mom and I were going to a cooking class.”
Hailing from a New Jersey suburb that boasts “a Panera, then lots of farms,” Gish modestly admits that the completion of her album this past December didn’t make much of a blip in her hometown.
“In the car on the way to the cooking class, I told [my mom] I just put out an album. She asked what it was called, I said Ed Buys Houses, and she was like, ‘alright… that’s fine, I guess.’ The release day party was me trying not to pass out at a cooking class in suburban New Jersey.”
Named after a mysterious realty sign Gish found in her hometown suburbs, Ed Buys Houses is the kind of engrossing record that deserves far more celebration than a well deserved nap. Taking cues from Courtney Barnett’s hyper-observational lyricism and Frances Quinlan’s freak folk tendencies before Hop Along dropped “Queen Ansleis” from their name, Gish’s sound is both markedly self-assured and playfully absurd.
Between fears of growing old on the cusp of her 20th birthday, hopes of getting a 95 in math class, contextualizing intimacy by knowing a partner’s password without changing it in Preferences, working at a plastic dinosaur factory, and a guy in New Jersey with an unquenchable lust for real estate, Ed’s world, like its creator’s, is humble in its singularity, effortlessly willing and able to make even the most mundane afternoons of being emotionally (and physically) lost worth documenting.
“I rebelled by playing ukulele,” Sidney states matter of factly.
The subject is “rediscovering art made in your teenage years” and my immediate reaction is to burn it all in a giant pyre outside the nearest Hot Topic. Gish takes the opposite route: air it all out and hope shame doesn’t override your confidence.
Partially inspired by her guitar enthusiast father (“Like, types of wood, guitar conventions… he’s one of those people”), Gish genuinely picked up the ukulele as a form of teenage rebellion.
“I just didn’t want to do the same thing my dad was doing,” she says. “I also thought it made me more quirky… I guess I was one of those people.”
The rebellion led Gish directly into a YouTube ukulele community led by Charlie McDonnell, a “quirky, totally 2011-y YouTube boy.” As a self-proclaimed “total choir kid that was also horrendously introverted,” Gish found something in their penchant for writing zany, humor-heavy ukulele songs. She began to privately post her own songs on Tumblr soon after.
“If I thought a song didn’t get enough notes to have it not be embarrassing, I’d delete it. I didn’t want anyone seeing [anything on] my music tag with zero notes! Even if it was a Sherlock fan blog that would like a song, I would keep it up.”
Aside from trading between her sister and close friends, Gish kept her recorded output between her and her Tumblr until releasing Don’t Call On Me, a self-proclaimed “dump album” compiled after a fateful Frankie Cosmos show.
“I put that out literally the day after I saw Frankie Cosmos. I went to her Bandcamp and saw she posted everything she’d made since she was sixteen. I was like, ‘I’ve been making stuff since I was sixteen and it’s not anywhere cool.”
Despite being removed from the confines of Tumblr, Don’t Call seemingly couldn’t have existed without the site’s constantly generating, aesthetic-cultivating mindset. An early version of Ed single “Midnight Jingle” appears as a humble bedroom demo, whereas “Music Tech Project” was made with the purpose of writing an orchestral song in 5/4.
“I was always thinking I had to record with multiple tracks because that’s what you’re supposed to do. I would sing with really tall vowels for no reason,” Gish says with a laugh.
While the occasional message from a high schooler championing the album is enough for Gish to keep it online, Don’t Call is equally important as a central statement of her early artistic mentality.
“I always felt the pressure of making sure what I put out was good, but then [I realized] it’s not going to be good because it’s your first time making stuff. I like having it up to show people that you can be really weird and bad and fifteen and still make music. It might be kinda bad, but you’ve still got time!”
If Don’t Call On Me was a collection of tentative first attempts at releasing songs, “The College Admissions Song” serves as the album’s outlier.
As the title suggests, the song was brazenly packaged with her college applications in the eternal high school senior’s quest of standing out to schools she felt unworthy of attending.
“I [visited] NYU and was literally, like, ‘I’m not cool enough to be there.’ Same thing at Bard… if I went there as myself a year and a half ago, I probably wouldn’t have survived.”
None of the schools she applied to ever commented on the song, but several let her in, including Northeastern. “I remember really, really wanting to get into [the Boston scene] because I did a Berklee summer program here in high school, so I joined a songwriting club at school where I met a bunch of friends.”
Gish also joined Pitch Please, one of Northeastern’s most prominent a cappella groups. Up until this past semester, she was the group’s beatboxer.
“Beatboxing ended up being the most fun way to do a cappella ever [compared to singing]. You don’t have to worry about getting out of breath… you’re just beatboxing everywhere! How is that not fun?”
The a cappella experience, songwriting prompts, and the guitar-driven quarters of Boston’s music scene peacefully co-habitated on her 2016 output, January’s Merry Crisis EP and September’s Dummy Parade. Crisis’ creation was based around the discovery of customizable amp models on Garageband, but Dummy is Don’t Call’s turbo-charged dump album sequel, cobbled together over Gish’s Freshman year at Northeastern.
Shifting from “feeling like Piper Chapman pre-incarceration” over fuzzy guitars (“The Big Bang”) to prolonged collegiate fears (“Megalopolis”), odes to dogs (“percy is a dog and it’s 7 am”) and cheeky self-promotion (“go like my frickin facebook page”), Dummy is as diverse in sound as Gish is confident in its “do what you want” approach.
“At the end of high school, I went to Seattle on a family trip and just listened to a lot of Sleater Kinney, Beat Happening, and Nirvana,” Gish recalls. “I was, like, looking at mountains in the distance like, ‘woah, this is probably what Kurt Cobain saw.’ I’m aggressively not punk enough, but it’s fine.”
Still, Gish actively champions the punk ethos exemplified in acts like Frankie Cosmos, Eskimeaux, Japanese Breakfast, and Girlpool. “Like, it’s kind of punk,” she says, “but they don’t use aggression for the sake of being aggressive.” Also noting their immediately gratifying song lengths and DIY mindset from production to album art, Gish kept her modern punk heroes in mind when Ed Buys Houses began taking shape in unusual order.
“Last March, when I was still making Dummy Parade, I made the collage that was the cover for Ed Buys Houses. [Then] I was like, ‘I think this is going to be the tracklist for Ed Buys Houses… I just gotta write the songs first and record them, I guess.”
An eye for crafty instrumentation has always been present on Gish’s songs, but Ed takes it to another level: ping pong balls and chopsticks serve as percussion on “It’s Afternoon, I’m Feeling Sick,” a tin mailbox becomes a snare on a few songs, and her guitar does double duty as bass on most of the record.
“I’ll just pitch [the guitar] down, put a sub bass on it, and take away high frequencies. I got a real bass for Christmas… hopefully I use it,” Gish says jokingly.
Although Ed is pretty assuredly Gish’s most cohesive album-length statement, she lightly jokes about it being a “Garageband record” simply because she doesn’t have enough room on her laptop for Pro Tools or Logic. Regardless of any debate over the populist recording app, Garageband seems to fit Gish’s whim-based recording style, whether she’s looping herself into a one person choir on “!Ed Buys Houses!” or adding a skit about working at a plastic toy dinosaur factory onto “Midnight Jingle.”
“I record things in my dorm room or my basement at home mostly. It’ll be 3 AM, I’m watching a House Hunters re-run with mute on, and I’m just talking to myself… that’s the recording process.”
Swirling ice in a long-since downed tea cup, Gish mentions her goal of releasing a new album or EP by the time she turns 20 in a couple weeks.
She revises the goal almost immediately, talking through nervous laughter about how she won’t have it ready by her birthday despite the wealth of lyrics she has in complaints written on her phone (“If it’s a rant, I’ll try to make it rhyme.”) All she needs is a peaceful night of mac and cheese, a really good movie, and a glass of wine to begin making “this prolific collage” that will herald the next album, but she believes laziness is ultimately her chief roadblock. If that’s truly the case, Gish does a fair job of hiding it.
While making an absurdist line of pins last year for show merch (ex. a “reverse Medusa” snake with human heads as hair, a cat with tiny cats as feet, a sentient egg advising the buyer to “make good choices”), Gish arbitrarily sent a few designs to her mother.
“She’s really crafty, so she just sends back the egg embroidered,” Gish says. “I was like, ‘yo!’ and sent her the cat too.”
The two generations of Gishs began collaborating on a line of embroideries based on Sidney’s drawings, snowballing into viral fame on Tumblr, fan tattoos, and, at its peak, a Buzzfeed article.
“My mom thinks it’s really funny,” Sidney says. “She does craft fairs and now custom embroidery, but the market for that kind of thing in New Jersey is questionable… so she laminated the Buzzfeed article and displays it next to her craft table.”
On top of her family’s burgeoning craft fair circuit, Gish also lends her vocals across the Boston scene gamut, popping up on producer Camino 84’s lounge disco track “Oh My” and singing back-up on the EP of Local Natives-y act Cosmic Johnny. I keep recalling Gish’s summation of Ed’s themes as she discusses her collaborations, mainly her summarization of Ed as “trying your best to be normal, but failing in really, really funny ways.” Like the Greek god of New England casting judgement on my pants, it feels a bit off from the confident reality Gish leads, but like Don’t Call On Me and Dummy Parade, the themes of Ed are just residual feelings she’s finally dumping out.
“I’ve noticed that I tend to overcompensate for feeling weird,” she begins. “Like, my panic response is to be weird as fuck. It used to be being quiet and it still is, but now there’s, like, a threshold where I start being terrifying once I cross. I felt super weird about that for a long time, but [I realized people] just express their anxiety in different ways than me. They don’t just think I’m uncool… well, they probably do, but I’m expressing it through being loud.”
Ed Buys Houses is available now via Bandcamp. Catch Sidney with Stolen Jars and Du Vide on April 8th and with Xiu Xiu, Harocaz, and Funeral Advantage on April 15th.
Out of the basement scene of Chicago, NE-HI emerged on the national stage with a sincerity and grit that’s arguably been missing for quite some time.
On their sophomore release, Offers, NE-HI provides feel-good music with a nostalgic edge; after listening to songs like “Stay Young” and “Out of Reach”, I wanted to escape to my high school bedroom, call up my crush, and then go loiter in a parking lot. NE-HI’s youthful energy serves up a vision of youth that is not as sappy as their 90’s jangle influences, but more grittier and emotionally relaxed, a quality likely due to their garage-rock tendencies and basement show origins. In conversation with them, their chill feels like the verbal equivalent of a friend handing you a free beer, which makes sense given their friendly Midwestern personalities. We caught up with them before their show at the Middle East Upstairs tonight to talk about Offers, the cult of Bruce Springsteen, and Animal Kingdom.
Allston Pudding: Are you guys driving right now?
Yeah we’re driving right now, from Kansas City to Omaha, Nebraska. Yesterday was the first day [of tour]. We’ve kinda been touring on and off the past few months, but yesterday was the first official day.
AP: Congratulations on Offers! How does it feel to have your second album out?
It feels really cool! We got it done about a year ago and were just sitting on it, waiting to release it, so it feels really cool to have it out and be able to share the songs. It feels like a good album, and a good step from the first album.
AP: What was different about making a record this time compared to the first?
The first one, we had basically written all the songs and that was our live set. This one, we had some of the songs written, we went in for one session for about a week or so, and then we scratched most of that other than a couple songs. We didn’t think it was ready, so we went back and the studio and did it, and that was most of our album.
AP: Do you think that made anything turn out differently in terms of the album’s sound?
I think it made things a little cleaner, but also a little heavier and not as reverbed-out as the first one. I think the songwriting is a little smarter or more deliberate as opposed to just sort of improvising as we went with the first record. We edited it a little bit better, I think.
AP: On “Every Dent,” there are some lyrics that mention “the guns of Navarone”… I was wondering what that was about.
Oh, yeah, that’s a movie! I don’t know if it’s my favorite or anything, but during the time I was writing that song, that movie came to mind. It’s about kind of being on the road and being disconnected from your life at home. Then, being at home, you’re kind of just by yourself too [and] kind of missing out on hanging out with your friends. But then when you’re on the road you’re also kind of missing out on hanging out by yourself because you are always with people.
AP: As you get more nationally known, is it weird to see yourselves receiving comparisons to influences like The Clean and Wire?
Mostly, they are cool. We like those bands a lot. Its funny; I didn’t really listen to The Clean that much until our first record came out and someone mentioned it. We all like that stuff, and it’s sweet to be compared to it. We do our own thing, but we definitely draw from those kinds of groups also.
AP: There’s also like a Bruce Springsteen shout-out on your page. Are you guys Springsteen lifers?
[laughs] Yeah, I’m a huge fan since I was in high school. I’m actually wearing a Springsteen shirt right now, so that made me laugh.
AP: What was it like coming up as a band from Chicago? Any difference going back there after touring so extensively?
It was really great! I lived in Milwaukee before I moved there and I moved down to Chicago for the band. Growing up in the Midwest informs who you are in terms of work ethic, or what you value maybe… I’m not sure if that’s true because I’ve never lived on the East or West Coasts. I think Chicago just has a really great, supportive community of artists and people who are doing lots of cool stuff. In terms of the Midwest, it definitely impacts your ideas of work and how you should treat people and be nice to people. I’m not saying that other people don’t do that too, but it’s also just kind of a stereotype of the Midwest.
There’s a lot of great DIY venues; there’s not many of those venues now, I guess, but there’s still a lot of great community there with different bands that are doing different kinds of styles. It’s kind of insulated in the sense [that] it’s not like a “showbiz town” like New York or LA, so you can kind of do your own thing and people kind of support that. Its competitive because you kind of want to make better music because your friends are too, but it’s not like we’re all trying to get famous.
AP: You mentioned that there were less DIY venues in Chicago now; a similar thing has been happening in Boston over the last few years.
Yeah, I think that’s kind of the nature of all DIY places. You know, just the city cracking down on that type of thing. I’m sure, maybe they’ll be a new wave of DIY stuff that’s coming up. You know, it’s pretty cool when you have the resources and the energy to get a place like that together, it’s a really cool thing to do.
AP: I’ve heard that your band met at Animal Kingdom; could you tell us about that?
Yeah, that was a DIY house our friends [lived] in. It was kind of my introduction to the Chicago music scene coming from Milwaukee. There were shows almost every single night. [You’d go] to hang out in the backyard, have some beers, and listen to a band in a basement or sometimes in the backyard. It was just a cool place where a lot of people were playing, or some people lived there that were in bands also. It was just kind of a really nice home base at the time. Sadly, it’s not there anymore.
AP: You write about spending time with your friends at Animal Kingdom and being a teenager; is it nostalgia that drives these songs now that you’re in your twenties?
I think you just write what you know, and especially with this album, we wanted to not be too abstract about it. We’re not teenagers [and] I feel more like an adult, but a few years ago when I was 21, I still felt like a teenager. I think we were just reflecting on that, getting older, and thinking about it in a way where were trying to keep that youthful energy, but also kind of grow up.
AP: Your video for “Stay Young” is all about Chicago… is that also a reflection on your hometown and youth?
I think the song is more about staying your in your mindset, not like “I want to party forever” but just like growing older and being okay with that and keeping your faith. And I think that, I don’t know if it’s connected with Chicago, we just wanted to show where we were from and the city a little bit. I think it’s connected maybe in the sense that Chicago changes all the time.
Offers is out now. Check out NE-HI with Steep Leans and Cove Sauce tonight, March 31st, at The Middle East Upstairs. For more information, check out the Facebook page.
While this past Tuesday was a night that would seemingly inspire nothing but curling up in bed early avoiding the cold and rainy hell that early New England spring always promises us, nothing could stop a hoard of people from cramming into Great Scott for yet another stacked bill of excellence. Once settled into your spot, you’d be able to peek through your friends and fellow concert goers and jam out in your personal space and grin to the person next to you and mutter “that was great” after every single song.
Boston mainstays and disposable American flag-flyers, halfsour opened the night with a impressively fast paced and brief jams that sent everybody into the right headspace. Wrapping up promptly and moving on quickly, Jay Som took hearts by the dozen with a surprisingly laid back and mellow performance. Truly inspiring, Jay Som manages to find a slim balance between accessible openness and reservation. Participating with the audience, getting involved, having a personal attachment to their performance, but not fetishizing its allure and draw. We all sang, we all shouted, we all begged for more.
Once significantly mellowed out, the crowd welcomed The Courtneys, featuring only one Courtney and two band members fighting a cold. Upbeat and pop driven, they helped us all rock out a decent amount to shake off the cold and wet that everybody would have to soon sludge through after a nice warm night of nothing but “good feels”. While The Courtney’s found out Great Scott doesn’t offer herbal tea no matter how sick you’re feeling half way through a month long tour, a few members of Jay Som, particularly the one sporting a “festive” hat, did find out that Great Scott offers a strong whiskey ginger to warm you up and get you home cheerful. Drink up and don’t sleep on gigs like this one.
Describing itself as the “ugly, charming little brother of the Pioneer Valley music scene”, Northampton-area band Bucket knows its strengths. The foursome’s new EP, Bouquet (out today via Sad Cactus Records) flaunts a modern spin on Malkmus phraseology, complete with zagging riffs and hooks that are as memorable as they are pointed. In the span of 5 songs, vocalist Will Meyer takes on everything from social dynamics and privilege to capitalism and the Koch brothers, all backed by guitars that explore the full spectrum of slacker rock. Produced by local legend Justin Pizzoferrato at Sonelab in Easthampton, it’s a smart refinement of a classic Pioneer Valley sound, shaped for a moment when thought-provoking material feels newly urgent every day.
Catch Bucket along with Hammydown, Bella, and Tundrastomper tonight in downtown Amherst for the Bouquet release show. (For more details, check the event page here or, as they say, ask a punk.)
Don’t worry; when you hit up O’Brien’s for this show on Friday night, there won’t be an exam. Spelling is a slightly psychedelic, experimental band from Boston, not a prerequisite for getting to the gig.
This should be Great News, which is also the first band on the bill. Great News are also locals, and are going to open the evening in a fit of fuzz. Delivered at top volume, catch tunes off this band’s latest EP including “I Am God”, “Hot Larvae”, and “I Quit”. This band sounds as disgruntled as these songs suggest, but if you’re looking shred with some punk jams, this is just the kind of news you want to hear.
If these guys put you at a loss for words, that’s good, because Ghosts of Sailors at Sea are an instrumental act. The wordless compositions of Andrew Wagner, Daniel Benoit, Mark Flight, and Patrick Murphy will be the perfect cleanser between sets. The band’s heavy rock isn’t out of step with the rest of the evening, but it’s just mesmerizing enough to relax. Chill and drift away in one of this band’s extended instrumental oceans.
While all of these bands are sure to blow your mind, hopefully it won’t give you an Aneurysm. This wild noise rock band from Boston’s own backyard are as brain-melting as they brag to be. With several EPs to their name, it’s worth checking out just see which songs this band will play. If this show had any mellow moments, these guys will make you forget.
Don’t flunk Friday night, catch Spelling, Great News, Ghosts of Sailors at Sea, and Aneurysm at O’Brien’s in Allston at 8pm. The show is 21+ and tickets are $8.
Drug Bug, the NYC based recording project of Phil Anastassiou, is in the midst of wrapping up their first EP. But in the meantime they wanted to share this track a song called “Seeing Stars”. Anastassiou explained the track’s context, “I wrote the song this past summer in the aftermath of a relationship while staying in an apartment we had shared for a while. There wasn’t another place for me to go to then, so out of necessity I spent a lot of time just marinating in the memories I associated with that space, and the song came out of those circumstances”.
Looking through the crowd at the Paradise Rock Club on Saturday night, there would be no definite conclusions you could draw about the bands that were about to play. Young, old and middle aged all impatiently asked each other when the music would start, their restlessness due to excitement rather than annoyance.
When Gabriella Cohen took the stage, the restlessness of the crowd focused in on the Australian singer songwriter as she let us know she was “here to chill us out before Foxygen”. And boy, did she. A stunningly androgynous voice backed by a big sound left the crowd asking for more as the opener finished their set.
And finally, Foxygen. A band that began in high school and has grown over the past 12 years into what we see today, Jonathan Rado and Sam France have no issue taking complete control of a room. A dancer dressed all in white posting up on stage next to France, the act is perfectly spontaneous, matching the mood of the crowd. Enforcing the idea that it’s Saturday night and anything can happen, France stops the show more than once to remind the crowd to behave.
Before the band left the stage, they dove head first into “Rise Up”, the last song on their 2017 record Hang. Particularly pointed due to the climate of the world today, the audience sang and swayed in unison. With an empty stage and the crowd cheering for an encore, an electricity ran through the room. Foxygen charmed us all in a way that only a big, glamorous rock band can. “Alright alright alright alright,” France says “I’ll play you some more of my beautiful music.”
The rebellion led Gish directly into a YouTube ukulele community led by Charlie McDonnell, a “quirky, totally 2011-y YouTube boy.” As a self-proclaimed “total choir kid that was also horrendously introverted,” Gish found something in their penchant for writing zany, humor-heavy ukulele songs. She began to privately post her own songs on Tumblr soon after.
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While making an absurdist line of pins last year for show merch (ex. a “reverse Medusa” snake with human heads as hair, a cat with tiny cats as feet, a sentient egg advising the buyer to “make good choices”), Gish arbitrarily sent a few designs to her mother.
