Going high-concept is a risky move for a band that is still finding its feet. Grandiose notions can collapse all too easily into superficial gimmickry if a young band gets caught up in them before it has mastered the basics. A cursory glance at Velah might easily arouse the suspicion that they have fallen into this very trap—after all, their recent 7″, “Skeleton House / Rose Wave,” comes bundled with the following: a square of black felt emblazoned with glittery-silver hermetic glyphs arranged in a circle around a skull; a brooch featuring the same skull; an ornate key, along with a letterpressed injunction to place the key under your pillow at night to induce a dream-time encounter with “the skeleton,” who will lead you to your “skeleton house” (I tried it—it didn’t work); a little card-stock model of said “skeleton house”; and a piece of chalk (no explanation for the last). Not even an LP to their name and they’re already practically Coheed and Cambria—talk about putting the cart before the horse!
Listen to them, though—or, better yet, hear them live, as I did on 2/28 at TT the Bear’s—and your fears will be assuaged, because their music, even at this early stage, is already good enough, and big enough, to earn them all their conceptual flights-of-fancy and then some. A traditional rock ‘n’ roll four-piece, they use their dual guitars to stunning effect, situating themselves in the proud interlocking-riffs tradition of Television, Sonic Youth, and Interpol. The last is an especially apt comparison, because Velah share Interpol’s knack for writing impeccably crafted songs in which taut, tense verses open out into widescreen choruses. Theirs is larger-than-life music, yet never at the expense of the individual elements—despite the all the spaciousness, nothing gets lost; every little note shines forth.
Jen, Velah’s bassist, confirmed after the show that big is what they’re going for. She told me that, last year, when they opened for Dum Dum Girls at Brighton Music Hall, they sounded more natural in that space than they ever had in the small clubs they are accustomed to. They’d probably sound even more natural onstage at the House of Blues, or the Bank of America Pavilion, and I hope they get there one day. For the time being, though, most of their shows will be in TT’s-sized venues, and a sound that big can feel a bit distant in a space that small. The crowd, at the start of Velah’s set, settled a good ten paces away from the stage, as if calibrating to music that sounded like it ought to be coming from farther away than was possible, and the band had to coax them closer. I would very much like to hear them try, if just as an experiment, to shrink their sound slightly—strip it down, maybe speed it up a bit—and see what happens. If the crowd approaches to the stage without being bidden, they’ll know they’re onto something.
After Velah, there was Boytoy. I should preface this bit by admitting up front that I am a HUGE Boytoy fan. Velah and Sean Bones were both good fun, but Boytoy was the reason I was there. I’d been dying to see this band ever since falling ass-over-teakettle for the two scratchy demo tracks on their Bandcamp page back in December, and after trying—and, for various reasons, failing—to see them on two different occasions, I was positively jittering with anticipation as they took the stage and started playing. So apologies in advance if I start gushing a bit.
Boytoy, by way of background, are Glenn Van Dyke (of Brooklyn’s Beast Make Bomb) on guitar, and Saara Untracht-Oakner and Dylan Ramsey (of Boston’s beloved You Can Be A Wesley) on guitar/vox and drums, respectively. Their first show was the opening slot at Allston Pudding’s own New Year’s Eve pizza party, just two months ago. Their second Boston show was at the Middle East opening for the Growlers and MMOSS; their third was that night. They reportedly have an LP’s-worth of songs sitting in the chamber, but for now all you can hear of them outside of a live show are their three-track Bandcamp, an appearance on BreakThru Radio, and two YouTube videos of their Middle East show, for a total of about half a dozen tracks. Less than a month ago they’d only played together something like five times.
What is most impressive about Boytoy (along with everything else) is the sheer variety of their sound, even across such a tiny sample pool. “Bad Brains” is a surfy fun-rock ditty that, out of nowhere, cuts a sharp left turn halfway through into an epic, Sonic-Youth-style dual-lead breakdown; “Zombie Workout” starts out surfy as well—starts, in fact, with the customary Dick-Dale-run down the fretboard that signifies “surf”—but then turns into a bouncy pop tune almost in the vein of the Cars; “Runner,” probably their best song yet, is an old-fashioned, stadium-ready guitar-pop anthem that would not have sounded out of place on alternative-rock radio in the mid-90s. The four other songs of theirs that are available online—”Shark in the Sun,” “TV Dreams,” and (as of the evening of 3/6) “Visits” on Bandcamp, as well as “Nightmares,” for which they will soon release a video—all have similarly distinctive sounds of their own.
I already knew just how brilliant Boytoy are on record for over two months—what I learned at TTs is that they are just as brilliant on stage, and that they pull it off like it’s nothing. Like Velah, they are of the dual-interlocking-riffs school; but where Velah are unapologetically outsize and grandiose, Boytoy are slackerishly casual. Velah’s songs are clearly impeccably crafted; Boytoy’s, though, are so well-crafted that they sound almost accidental. Glenn’s lead lines (she and Saara follow a fairly traditional lead/rhythm model) have a way of sounding almost inept at first, as if she were just playing random notes, but then finishing out such that even the random-sounding beginning makes perfect sense in hindsight. If Velah are Interpol, then Boytoy are more like Pavement, so talented that they can throw their talent away like a joke and still blow your mind.
Believe me: this band’s got legs like a fucking centipede, and with a little luck, they will walk far. If you’ve been on the lookout for an unknown band to start liking so that, when they get big, you can brag to your friends about how you liked them before they were cool, then look no further.
After Boytoy, Sean Bones was inevitably going to be somewhat of an anticlimax for me. Plus, a cursory glance at his website made me apprehensive: between the title of his latest LP, Buzzard’s Boy—a play on Buzzard’s Bay, a popular Cape Cod vacation spot—and the website’s suggestion to listen to it “outdoors at night,” I couldn’t help but think, Oh boy, more beach music. That whole beach thing—bands singing about the beach, having the word “beach” in their name, etc.—was cool for awhile, but I myself am getting quite tired of it. So as Sean Bones took the stage, my mind was open but my expectations were not high.
Even before the music started, though, it was clear that I had nothing to worry about. Sean Bones himself, for one, is a captivating presence onstage—massively tall and lanky with a deep oval face set like a periscope lens atop a long and curving neck, with huge dark eyes peering through thick bangs, looking more than anything like a beefed-up Nick Cave. For two, two-thirds of Boytoy—Saara and Dylan—were in his band, so how bad could it be?
The answer: not bad at all—in fact, quite a blast. The thing that annoys me most about beach music is its too-cool-for-school languor, its tendency to plunk lazily along, swaying back and forth as if lying in a hammock with a flower-festooned sombrero over its eyes, instead of actually rocking. This trend Sean Bones happily eschewed. Instead, he rocked out unapologetically, making the crowd dance just as hard as they did during Boytoy’s irresistible “Zombie Workout.”
All in all, a good night—but, no question, Boytoy were the payload. See them on the 18th at the Middle East if you can, and keep a close eye on them this year—they are going places.
– Nick Cox