Live Shows: TRAITRS, Dead Leaf Echo, and Gretchen Shae & The Middle Eight, The Middle East, Cambridge, MA 11/9/24

Dark Spring puts on a festival in the Boston area every spring, featuring dark post-punk bands playing all together. This weekend they put on a show at The Middle East Upstairs featuring TRAITRS, Dead Leaf Echo, and Gretchen Shae & The Middle Eight. All three bands definitely fit the dark and goth category, but all three were just diverse enough to keep the evening interesting.

Gretchen Shae & The Middle Eight opened the show. The local heroes were the most straight up rock band of the night. They're dark tinged with goth elements, but still a fairly straightforward rock band. Opening with their brand new and excellent single "Heroes Shouldn't Be Villains," the Boston band plowed through their set with an obvious excitement to be playing the show. Fans that were there for TRAITRS and Dead Leaf Echo may have been confused by their style, but they were quickly won over by a set of epic dark rock music. Plus, who doesn't want catchy songs with some power pop elements no matter how dark they may be?

Brooklyn's Dead Leaf Echo played next, and... just... wow. They might have been the loudest bands I've seen live this year. Their albums are these lovely versions of dark post punk, but live they cranked up the volume and the noise without sparing anything. Despite how loud and noisy they were, Dead Leaf Echo also had a heavy groove to the songs, almost daring the audience to dance. It was like a combination of Joy Division and New Order with the noise and aggression of Sonic Youth thrown in. If that doesn't have you looking for a live date near you, then I don't even know what you're doing right now.

Closing out the evening was TRAITRS, the band I was least familiar with going into the night. The duo are more on the dark wave side of things, and played a much more dance and electronic version of post punk. It might have been because they were playing after Dead Leaf Echo, but their set seemed much more quiet and restrained than the bands before them. TRAITRS are the type of band that can prove dark and supposedly depressing music can still be a ton of fun live, as much of the audience grooved throughout their set. It's a type of sound I wasn't completely sold on when they first went on, but within three songs I was wholeheartedly won over.