Enter for a chance to win one pair of tickets to the Speedy Ortiz Girls Rock Campaign benefit show with Downtown Boys and Ursula on 12/9 at the Middle East Downstairs! One winner will be chosen at 5pm on 12/6.
It pretty much goes without saying that the global atrocities in the last couple months have brought the holiday cheer and faith in humanity to a dismal low, sales but at least some solace can be found in the form of helpers in the aftermath.
In the wake of the recent Colorado Planned Parenthood terrorist attack, cialis we’ve seen everything from comedians offering Shrek-inspired nudes in lieu of a donation (s/o to former AP writer Jamie Loftus for that gem) to musicians and labels donating merch proceeds to the non-profit, including new music blog Post-Trash.
The Exploding in Sound-affiliated site announced its debut compilation yesterday, a whopping 52-song effort featuring unheard demos from local favorites like Pile, Horse Jumper of Love, and Palehound. All proceeds from the pay-what-you-want compilation will aid Planned Parenthood, so we’re hard pressed for excuses in terms of missing out on this comp.
Converse has really outdone itself this year. The Rubber Tracks series, which has been consistently bringing excellent free shows to Boston, had its best run yet, punctuated by theepicfivenightresidency at the Sinclair in May. However, they’re not quite done with 2015 yet.
On December 15th, Converse is bringing Big Boi to the Sinclair. Yes, the hustler half of Outkast, Sir Lucious Left Foot himself will be gracing one of Boston’s finest venues. And yes, as always, it will be free. RSVPs will go up tomorrow at noon right here. These will go very quickly.
Despite Starbucks coffee cup drama and society’s standard, yearly debates over the celebration of Christmas, I’d argue that Thanksgiving tends to reveal itself as the most uncomfortable holiday of the year.
Between displays of drunk uncles, bickering aunts, apathetic cousins, and the barrage of uncomfortable topics broached by family members that share a meal maybe twice a year at most, Thanksgiving tends to leave a crater of awkwardness before pumpkin pie is served. Luckily, even shouting matches over “I think I am a nice person” Donald “A lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive” Trump can be drowned out and Stove’s Is Stupider arrived this past month like a cornucopia of noise-cancelling riffs sent from the Thanksgiving gods.
Although Dinosaur Jr. comparisons followed Steve Hartlett with his previous outfit, Ovlov,Is Stupider feels like a more direct descendent to J. Mascis’s laconic musings and earworm riffs than anything previous. Hartlett prods the world around with endless questioning and wandering on Is Stupider, which strangely feels like a relief after being attacked with job and student loan questions. Most importantly though, songs like “Wet Food” perfectly capture the woozy feeling of aging, whether it’s making the leap from the kids table or considering your place on this stupid planet.
This week, we looked at “Food” in a Tryptophan-induced haze, bringing football ringtones, essential songs of fall, and… uh, Green Day along for the ride.
#14 – “Wet Food” by Stove
Tim: So how was this second listen after, you know, post-Thanksgiving stupor?
Dad: You know, I thought that was one of the more poppier songs you’ve had me listen to, which is not a negative comment. I really like that song. In fact, at the beginning, I could’ve sworn it was Green Day.
Tim: Oh wow, really?
Dad: Yeah, I cannot believe it. It was a great tune, very well put together. The musicians were real good; I liked that drum beat. I really like that strum style too, that “duk-duk-duk-duk”on the guitars. At some points, I felt it was a little Springsteen-ish too. The only negative comments I’ll make is the ending; I wanted more of a triumphant ending, but it kinda fizzled out. And then the singer during the prolonged notes there was, uh, kinda losing it.
Tim: Would you picture him on The Voice doing this?
Dad: [laughs] He would not be on The Voice, no.
Tim: So not that poppy, but…
Dad: No, but it was very good, very catchy tune. I could definitely see that getting played on a radio station…it passed the toe-tapper test! I got a question though: the song was called “Wet Food”, but I didn’t hear one line about wet food. Did I miss it?
Tim: I think it’s a play on another band on the same label as Stove named Palehound. They put out an album called Dry Food this year, so I think it’s just him messing around.
Dad: Ahh, I didn’t know if the guy just likes gravy on his stuff or something.
Tim: It’s a perfect Thanksgiving song! You can kinda tell from a band named Stove that names are meant to be taken a little lightly.
“But yeah, the Stove song reminds me of ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’a bit.”
Dad: There’s so many weird names out there; that doesn’t bother me. Actually, the Red Sox have a term called the Hot Stove League where, in the general store days, all the old guys would sit around the store’s hot stove in the winter and predict trades. They’d tell stories, start rumors about who they should pick up…it’s all conjecture though. In fact, look it up, but I think there’s a Hot Stove jam session for music and baseball fans. Maybe that’s where they got it from?
Tim: I’m not sure about them being inspired by baseball jam sessions; I’ll look into that. I think I read that they got it from combining the songwriter’s name, Steve, with his old band’s name, Ovlov, which is just Volvo spelt backwards.
Dad: Oh…Ovlov sounds like some kind of anatomy part.
Tim: [laughs] Dare I ask where an ovlov would be located on a body, Dad?
Dad: It sounds like a lady’s…uh, never mind. And the name of the album is Is Stupider?
Tim: Yep, so it reads ‘Stove is stupider’, like, than Ovlov. Do you think it’s stupid?
Dad: Nah, bands these days are just trying to be different…
Tim: Like who? What are some wacky band names?
Dad: Bearing in mind that I mostly listen to country, most artists I like just use their names. It’s just Luke Bryan, Brad Paisley, Tim McGraw, but then you show me the bands with the weird names like, uh, that band from Worcester you liked in high school? Four Year Strong, something like that? What the hell does that mean? And then there was an award show not too long ago and Fall Out Boy was on it. What’s a fall out boy?
Tim: [laughs] Fall Out Boy was a superhero on The Simpsons!
Dad: I didn’t really watch that show. It was the suckiest show to ever suck…isn’t that what Homer used to say? D’oh?
Tim: Oh my god, Dad… let’s back to the song. When I sent this one to you, I said it reminded me of a good song to play in the Fall. Are there specific songs you go for around Thanksgiving?
Dad: Usually, the football theme songs or something like that. Fall isn’t a season I think of a particular genre or type of song. You asked me that in the email and the only thing I could come up with at the time was The Mamas and Papas’“California Dreamin”. It’s kinda not in my era, but it’s got the line about all the leaves of Fall. Or it’s like, “all the leaves are brown”or something.
Tim: Wait, you sit around and listen to, like, the Monday Night Football theme in your free time? Like, not while watching a game?
Dad: Sometimes. It was my ringtone for a while. It’s kind of funny because I looked up Thanksgiving songs and it had, like, four results. Meanwhile, Christmas songs have, like, ten thousand pages. Thanksgiving really got the short end of the stick other than the Turkey song that Adam Sandler does.
Tim: Yeah, you played that one yesterday. Man, the jokes are so aged on it. Like, I think there’s jokes about Betty Grable and Sammy Davis Jr. in there that just fly right over my head.
Dad: Well let’s play it for next week’s song and I’ll teach you! [laughs] Well actually, doesn’t Green Day have a Fall song?
Dad: Yeah! There you go! How come that didn’t make my Google search? But yeah, the Stove song reminds me of “Wake Me Up When September Ends”a bit, so maybe that’s where the Fall connection is coming in.
Tim: Oh god, I hope not. Okay, final rating and thoughts on this one?
Dad: Honestly, probably a B+. If the guy’s voice was a bit better, I’d give it an A. Other than that, I’d say ‘good job, stupid!’
Sun Club‘s been busy this year. The latter half of 2015 took them from Baltimore to Europe and back. “We didn’t expect there to be a lot of people at our shows in Europe at all,” said Devin McCord, drummer of the bright and eclectic indie rock band Sun Club, over the phone back home in Baltimore. “But we got there and the crowds were so enthusiastic… staying for the whole entire show. Here, people don’t stay for the whole shows a lot of the time, but in Europe it was awesome to hang with people after the shows and have them really dig our music.”
Their latest album, The Dongo Durango, is the band’s first release on ATO Records, which boasts artists such as Alabama Shakes and My Morning Jacket alongside these newcomers.
“It’s so cool to have a label backing you,” said McCord. “When you’re touring, they just help with so much. People sometimes talk about their label as a bad thing, but as far as labels go we’ve been lucky with how accepting they are with all the weird stuff.”
“The weird stuff” would include things like recording an album at the Baltimore Community ToolBank, a warehouse they frequented at night when it wasn’t in use, running through each song dozens of times to get them right, live, in one take.
“For some random reason, we had to do ‘Cheeba Swiftick’ like a thousand times; it was tough to get that tempo right,” said McCord. But the live sound is essential to Sun Club’s ethos. The production on the album transports you to the warehouse, or the basement, or the intimate club where you’re likely to catch Sun Club performing on any given night. It puts you right in the front row next to your friends, watching the band jump around, throwing everything they have into each song.
“We’ve had this album recorded for about a year now, so it feels nice to finally have it out,” said McCord. They had been sitting on The Dongo Durango for a while, but they kept writing new material during that time. “We have a lot for a new album written, but we’re going to record it soon. First we gotta soak in this one for a while,” said McCord.
After the holidays, it’s all about touring, making music videos, and more writing. “It never really stops,” McCord said, not with indignation but with excitement. Europe is calling for them again, as well as a US headlining tour sometime in the beginning of 2016 and a performance at Firefly Festival this summer. Sun Club is just starting, and they don’t want it to stop.
The naming process for Sun Club’s songs is more organic than obvious. Seemingly random words are forced together to produce new and peculiar imagery. I asked Sun Club if they could illustrate a few of their song titles, and the results, well, speak for themselves:
Earlier this year, we went behind the scenes with experimental pop group The Symptoms as they recorded their debut LP “Lens” at Herd Studio in Roxbury, MA (WATCH HERE). Today, we’re stoked to bring you a live video of the Allston-based band from their album release show at Great Scott this past summer. The clip features one of the albums deeper cuts “Faded Forest”, a slow burner with some ominous synths, serious guitar shredding, and an epic finale. Check the video below, and listen to the full album HERE.
“Listen,” singer-songwriter Alejandro Rose-Garcia, aka Shakey Graves, demanded of his audience.
“Listen to your parents… sometimes. Listen to your elders….sometimes. Listen to yourself…,” he paused, and when the audience tried to cut him off by shouting back ‘always’, he stopped them. “No, no, sometimes you guys, only sometimes!”
This was the kind of wisdom that the crowd, crammed into a sold-out Royale, came to hear. Shakey has an easy confidence on stage, and it allows him to charm with both his casual between-song banter and honest, bluesy songs. The folk artist’s new album “And the War Came” has endured since its release last year. The songs on the album are more of the kick-drum centric, plucking guitar style that Shakey has long claimed his own. They translate well live, his voice taking on an even throatier quality and the instrumentation given new energy.
Though Shakey’s set had its wild moments, the show began on an ultimately more riotous note with the southern punk of Those Darlins. Hailing from Nashville, the band was a sensible opener for Shakey, sharing his country influences and twangy vibe. The audience, however, seemed entirely unprepared for the punk rock in front of them. It was an older crowd, and even the young people were the plaid-shirt/backwards-baseball-cap demographic. Many stood, somewhat apathetic, if not appalled, by the louder band. The hour-long set was nonetheless versatile, featuring songs that ranged from out-right punk to slower, country-style ballads. No matter how they were received, the band primed the stage for the kind of spirit that Shakey would bring.
Shakey arrived on stage solo, easing the audience in with some of his slower works. Songs like “Only Son” were able to stand alone with his intricate finger picking and poignant harmonies. Once everyone had gotten comfortable, swaying in time to the slower tunes, Shakey decided to turn up the volume. He was joined by his backup band; a drummer, bass player, mandolinist, and electric guitarist to tackle his louder tunes. Though much of the material came from his latest release, there were few new and unfamiliar songs, a sign that a new album may be in the works.
The show was comprised of a series of highlights, and it truly peaked late in the evening, when Shakey played some of his strongest songs off his latest album. The heavy emotion of a song like “Hard Wired” had people captivated, while during “Dearly Departed”, enthusiastic clapping and screaming in place of Esme Patterson’s missing harmonies ensued. Shakey had more reflective moments, admitting to the audience that he was an inexperienced and confused teenage boy, who wrote sad love songs that were fictional but ended up foreshadowing his adult life. “In a Peter Pan moment, I stitched young me on my body and flew out the window,” he joked, before breaking into “Tomorrow” a song he began as a teenager, but only recently finished.
Shakey took the crowd through emotional twists and turns, mirroring the chaotic quality of his music. One minute, he was cracking jokes and telling stories of his past, the next he played one of his more gut-wrenching songs, or encouraging everyone to stomp and clap along in the more rambunctious moments. It was a long and exhaustive set, and at the end of the night Shakey got exactly what he wanted – sometimes, everyone listens to him.
Weird Dane is, for lack of a better term, weird. Coming out of the western MA collective known as Dark World, which is known for its bizarre and outlandish styles, Weird Dane is almost infectiously approachable. Releasing the video to his latest single of “Forget to Breathe”, the man has a simple message of crushes on girls on the background of catchy electro beats. What’s even stranger is who joins him on this escapade as Potty Mouth’s Abby Weems jumps in under her own moniker of Babby. The straight-up poppy marks such a rash departure from what it expected from the both of them that the song makes you question reality as it entrances you. Weird indeed.
You can check out the video below and get lost in the void yourself as you await Weird Dane to release his 30-song debut “KOS” (King of Swag) on Dark World next month.
I’m not usually one for making grand, therebuy cialis hyperbolic statements, thumb but if my repeated viewings of The Warriorscould be used as reference, I’m fairly certain the fuzz rock crowd is, like the almighty Cyrus, the one and only to rule over us all.
I’m not saying this as personal preference or anything. I mean, sure, I enjoy few things more than baptizing myself in the holy waters of PBR and Narragansett, and getting greasy in a basement that should’ve been condemned a decade ago, but this goes far beyond my masochistic need to rupture my eardrums bimonthly. This is about witnessing a dance circle of textbook sorority sisters thrashing harder than a biker couple just five feet ahead. This is about a population of dads in the crowd genuinely there to see the bands and not because their bratty kids dragged them along for excruciating satanic worship via chunky riffs. Locally and nationally, the fuzz rock scene and its fans are an anomaly to behold, but few bands make it look as easy to understand as PANGEA.
On the local end, the babes of Dinoczar held their own as representatives for the venerated House of Rising Fuzz scene. Although word on the street is that they originally hail from Laguna Beach and, by proxy, still have no concept of what snow looks like, the trio brought out new cuts from their upcoming Sick Wind LP with the menacing fury of someone that has shoveled until the sweet release of IcyHotdoesn’t even feel good anymore. Or, you know, the fury of people that had to live on the same beach as Lauren Conrad, but never got invited to her sweet ass drug parties. We’re just happy they’ve decided to claim this coast as their new home.
While a wise group of philosophers collectively known as 311 made the world examine if amber is the color of our energies, folks like White Reaper bring me the simplest joy for reminding the world that there are alternative, but still desirable energy color choices to obtain. “Last night, I got so drunk, I vomited right after our set,”singer Tony Esposito bantered in true scuzz rock fashion before attributing it to #tourlyfe.
While I bet they want the world to believe they shred until their stomachs turn nightly, I’d bet if Reaper were to own an energy color, it would be whatever’s on the opposite end of a sugar-induced rainbow of unicorn spew. Blasting out most of their phenomenal LP, White Reaper Does It Again!, the Kentucky band flexed the fact that they’re already pros of hook-laden fuzz pop and damn well know it. Highlights like sing-along, “Sheila”and micro-single “Last 4th of July”brought Esposito’s snotty delivery to a peak as the rest of Reaper unabashedly head-banged and raised their guitars to hair metal heaven.
Although some may claim names like Ty Segall, Nathan Williams, Mikal Cronin, and John Dwyer as living fuzz saints, PANGEA have built a reputation in the last six years that deserves some canonical notation. Rising from the already fertile SoCal scene in 2009, PANGEA wasted no time in taking advantage of their geographical blessings, signing to Burger Records within two years of forming in college. After Badillac marked their debut on major indie Harvest Records last year followed by The Phage EP this year with Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson as producer, PANGEA’s rise proved itself as rapid as it is unstoppable.
Opening with Badillac favorite “Sick Shit”, the band cut through fourteen of their finest in under 45 minutes, leaving little room for the crowd’s feet to hit the floor. Even with inclusions of ‘older’favorites like “Too Drunk to Cum”and “Night of The Living Dummy”acting as reminders of the band’s smirking attitude (which was personified in bassist Danny Bengston’s pseudo-cowboy getup), PANGEA’s set was a clear showcase of a band growing alongside their successes. Although their recordings are not nearly as lo-fi as they used to be, cuts from ThePhage EP were treated with the same booming joy as the aforementioned Dummy cuts, proving the quality of their diverse, yet unified fanbase.
The fuzz is clearly here to last in Boston and, if bands like PANGEA accept their Cyrus-like standing, they could easily take over the city once the tallboys drain out of their systems.
For all photos from the show, check out out gallery below.
Whats up party people! We’re back with a new episode of our hit series “This or That”, featuring Brooklyn punk rockers Honduras. We first met the band at SXSW this past spring, when we interviewed them at the Converse Rubber Tracks HQ. Unfortunately due to technical difficulties the interview was unusable, but we did get this sick Beastie Boys style pic, so not all was lost…
Just a few months ago, the band released their debut LP Rituals, and hit the road to tour the country alongside Oberhofer. We caught up with them before their show at Great Scott, and asked them some hard hitting questions, check the vid below:
Make sure to catch Honduras when they return to Great Scott on December 15th, their live show is not to be missed folks! Get yr tickets HERE.
