Photos By Sarah Wilson
Colleen Green @ The Worthen House Attic
As we previously alerted, Lowell’s The Town And The City Festival commenced last weekend (April 8-9) at a smattering of venues all around the city’s historic Downtown section. Music fans keen on variety were able to catch sets in bakeries, cafes, breweries, lofts, dive bar attics, and banquet halls, which is to say the Town and The City team packed a lot of different sounds into a (relatively) small radius. Allston Pudding was on sight in the Mill City for the Saturday slate and managed to see quite a few acts doing their thing at a handful of locales. We also had some really tasty dumplings, but that’s a whole other story. With all that said, here’s our three favorite sets of the night and a gallery of everything else we saw, too.
SAVAK @ The Worthen House Attic
SAVAK @ The Worthen House Attic
New York indie quartet SAVAK actually played two shows in the MA area on Saturday night, first ripping through a tidy set at the attic space of beloved dive The Worthen House ahead of Colleen Green (who also rocked while debuting a new solo set accompanied by a booming drum machine triggered by a tablet) for The Town and The City before hitting the road to play Jamaica Plain’s Midway Cafe with Chris Brokaw. Pulling mostly from their soon-to-be-released new LP (in fact it’s out this Friday, April 15th), Human Error / Human Delight, their set had an appealingly workmanlike pace to it, which comes as no surprise given their pedigree as musicians. The opening skronky punk-funk of “I Don’t Want To Be Defended” set the tone early, this band really means it.
Kind Being @ The Purple Carrot Bread Co.
Kind Being @ The Purple Carrot Bread Co.
The relatively new Allston indie pop trio Kind Being kicked off the show at a bread bakery right along the main drive downtown as part of The Town and The City with a tight set culling entirely from their 2021 debut EP Two Truths, minus a few umm skits made from their keyboard presets. Something of a supergroup, Kind Being features Tommy Ng and Hannah Foxman (of Jesus The Dinosaur) alongside Mateo Garcia (of 5ever, Gauntly, and many others), but their gentler, drum-machine lead approach leans more to the former than the latter. Ng takes the lead on most of Truths including the infectious single “Sinking Stone” but Garcia’s Death Cab-y “Bros” continues to be their show-stopping centerpiece live. The harsh fluorescent light in the bakery did not deter from a fun if slightly off-the-cuff set, and Kind Being continues to impress as they get more and more gigs under their belt.
Screaming Females @ Taffeta at Western Ave. Studios
Screaming Females @ Taffeta
New Jersey punk-blues lifers Screaming Females have been a can’t miss live act basically their whole career, and their headlining The Town and The City set on Saturday night felt both like a vital uprising and a well-earned victory lap. Fronter Marissa Paternoster exclaimed with wide-eyed surprise early into the set that this was the band’s first trip to Lowell, but you wouldn’t know it from the crowd. The heaving sold out mass sang along to nearly every word, reaching out with gasps at every high-speed tapping solo, breathing heavy sighs of relief during brief pauses for tuning. Playing on a soundstage normally used for livestream broadcasts housed inside a labyrinth of artist studios and shops itself housed in a series of lofts off the beaten path of the rest of the festival, the gig had a certain air of lawlessness. You had to really be looking to find this one. And those that did were treated to an hour of pure rock and roll fury from a band clearly re-energized after some time off the road due to the pandemic. A fitting end to a weekend that celebrated the meaning of coming together to experience art.
Here’s a gallery of our whole day at The Town and The City, featuring Tsyk Tsyk Task, Colleen Green, SAVAK, Kind Being, Linnea’s Garden, and Screaming Females. All photos by Sarah Wilson.
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