The lineup featured at The Sinclair on Thursday was just as much a collection of musicians as it was weirdoes, which is to be expected from the U.S.A. and Canada Burgerama “Caravan of Stars Tour 2013.” Burger Records features bands such as King Tuff, Diarrhea Planet, Jeff the Brotherhood, Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, so being a pretty kick ass weirdo that makes awesome music is expected. Hitting Cambridge this October evening was White Fang, Colleen Green, Together Pangea, Gap Dream, Cosmonauts and The Growlers.
Despite having a chill beach vibe The Growlers define as “Beach Goth,” the other bands covered most musical bases. Colleen Green blew the crowd away as she performed a twenty-five minute set with the aide of nothing but dark clothes, black shades and her guitar. Green’s sweet and honest lyrics are the perfect combination of simple but strong guitar riffs that sound reminiscent of ‘70s pop punk and The Ramones but female and soft spoken.
After Colleen Green, the other openers brought a louder, dirtier mess of genres that ranged from the gritty rock and punk of the young band Together Pangea to the psychedelic lo-fi skuzzy sounding electronica of Gap Dream. Cosmonauts felt reminiscent of Christopher Owens’ band Girls, due to similar musical style; even one of the members of Cosmonauts could be a dead ringer for Owens’ doppelgänger. The band played like a well-oiled machine with enthusiasm and chemistry as they played from their three-album catalogue, getting the crowd ready for those Growlers.
The Growlers ended the night with a vibrant set heavily featuring songs from their third and newest album Hung at Heart such as “Row,” “One Million Lovers” and “Someday” mixed with their old standbys that bring imagery of beaches, bonfires, maybe blurry vision and those rough-ass blankets/ponchos they sell in Mexican markets for like five bucks. A band like The Growlers defies genres and instead makes labels irrelevant, pointing out that most of the creative music made can’t be put into a genre anymore.
The new breed of surf music that The Growlers have perfected in their nearly eight years of making music can only be described with identifiers like fuzzy and psychedelic with beachy guitar riffs and an incredible amount of voice distortion and reverb effects and even a hint of, dare I say it, country? The headlining band is set to release their fourth studio album in mid-November, so be ready to hate life due to lack of beach access plaguing us city dwellers this winter, even if we will have a trippy new soundtrack and the memory of an entertaining night in early October. Getting weird never sounded so good.