I think it was roughly between the door and finding a corner to shed my coats that I recognized my body was falling apart.

Before you assume some terribly indulgent, “I took something at a college show and paid the consequences through terrifying hallucinations” story unfolding, let me squash that. Sure, WZBC assembled three of the East Coast’s finest purveyors of bedroom-born electronic music for their Spring concert and their invite mentioned a night of “chill vibes”, but I guess I’m in that fun percentage that just likes bass-heavy glo-fi stone cold sober on a Tuesday night. 

This is, however, an indulgent, “I realized I had a low-to-mid-grade fever at a show and decided to stay because of journalistic commitment and a fairly strong certainty it wasn’t contagious” story.

Given my suddenly realized/slightly sweaty state of health, opener Little Spoon was salvation in all of its fever dream pop by way of jubilant electronic glory. Cameron Potter located a sweet spot between the jumpy, “dance music for people that don’t dance” waters of Dan Deacon’s live show and the heavier depths Baths retreated to on Obsidian, making for an introspective set of self described “pillow pop”. Before his last two songs, Potter asked the audience with reverb still on if they “believed in angels” before launching back in, cementing my belief that I might’ve slipped for a brief moment towards the sickly afterlife with bass-heavy worship guiding me in.

I’m only going to cause cries of hyperbole if I say “Skinny Bones has my vote for best band in the city right now”, so I’ll rephrase it: I feel like every time I see Skinny Bones, they are impossibly stronger live and I see them fairly regularly, so I’m happy to submit to our new folktronic overlords. The duo ran through renovated bits of last year’s Noise Floor with a few songs from Skinni Dip they hadn’t playing “in a fucklong of time”, but the subtle joy of Skinny Bones lies in watching singer Jacob Rosati maintain endearing, living room style banter (“Do you all have hobbies? Like gardening maybe?”) while showing off his homemade instruments like a proud uncle that deconstructs lawnmowers out of the garage.

To be completely honest with you, I took a sharp turn downwards in awareness during sets and I could’ve potentially had a lucid dream through Ricky Eat Acid’s entire set. That’s not a slight to the incredibly fluid talents of Sam Ray; his Ricky Eat Acid project had an incredible year in 2014 and I was excited to see whether his live show would fall closer to his celebrated ambient LP Three Love Songs or towards the more crowd-ready glitch work of Sun Over Hills. The answer was a hybrid of the two, bringing out a new side of the project with pitch-wobbling dance music on Nyquil and stylistic nods to Ray’s overlooked (and, as with any Ray production, totally free) An Abundance of Strawberries under the Julia Brown name last year. Throughout his set, the bookish Tumblr set politely nodded along and somehow coexisted alongside the obligatory EDM bros two clicks away from moshing, which probably means Ricky Eat Acid is on the cusp of something much bigger. Those suspicions seemed fulfilled when the (sorta) Drake-sampling “In my dreams we’re almost touching” started the set into its final descent, commanding pockets of the crowds to erupt into dance. I even tried to move a bit, but then I realized my hands felt like weighted, autonomous creatures affixed to my sickly vessel. Have you ever realized how heavy hands are? Hands are weird.

But seriously, once you start pondering the weight of hands in public, go home. It’s time to find your safe space and call it a night.

I wish I could cap this off by saying the progression of each band cured my fever, but alas, I called in sick the next morning and swaddled myself in every blanket I could find in the area. WZBC knew the right kind of music to assemble for an illness I didn’t know I had before walking in though, so how’s that for a quality spring concert?