Live Shows: Weakened Friends, NOVA ONE, and Pinklids, The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA 11/20/25

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I was extremely excited for the Weakened Friends show Thursday night. As each band playing was announced, I got even more excited since I love all three bands that ended up playing. Weakened Friends, NOVA ONE, and Pinklids are all bands that we've been covering for a while now, and watching grow as artists, and it's been great to become a bigger fan of them and see them evolve.

We first covered Weakened Friends back in September 2015 when they released Gloomy Tunes. Back then, they were pretty much the house band for when a 90's band came through town, particularly at The Sinclair. Thursday night saw them headlining The Sinclair on tour for their excellent new album Feels Like Hell. They took the stage like conquering heroes, with an adoring crowd screaming along to virtually every word of every song. The focus of the show was obviously the songs on the new album (some of my personal favorites were "NPC" with Jared Egan of Sidewalk Driver filling in for Buckethead, "Tough Luck (Bleed Me Out)," and "Nosebleed"), but still found plenty of time for longtime favorites like "Main Bitch" and "Blue Again." Ten years in, a Weakened Friends set is like a greatest hits playlist with favorite after favorite after favorite. Everyone at The Sinclair seemed to be having the absolute time of their lives, including Weakened Friends. It was their biggest headline show to date, and watching them crush the stage they've opened on multiple times felt great. I'm looking forward to spending the next ten years as an obsessive fan.

Playing second was NOVA ONE. We first covered the Providence band opening up for Deer Tick back in 2017. You never quite know what you're going to get with a NOVA ONE show. Sometimes it's a full band, others a duo, and sometimes it's Roz Razkin solo. This tour saw a full four piece band, and this might have been the most rockin' I've heard them so far. It's still that (mostly) laid back 60's doo wop meets modern indie rock sound we've come to love, just a more energetic version. It was a fun and engaging set showing off the amazing songs they've released in the last eight years. It's easy to not realize just how many great songs a band has until they're all played one right after the other, and NOVA ONE won over the entire audience by the time their set ended. I'm definitely excited to see how NOVA ONE evolves next.

Pinklids are the band we've covered the least out of the three, discovering them in January 2023 at the Firehouse in Worcester. For a band with only two official singles out, they absolutely obliterated the stage in a full out insane set. Their sound is a mash up of New Wave meets No Wave that demands you dance to with complete abandon. It's almost like a combination of The B-52s and Lightning Bolt, which I never knew I needed. Their short set converted many a fan over to the Pinklids bandwagon, with a high energy, borderline runaway train performance. Amber Lawson is a future full blown rock star, and Ellis Roundy plays as if Iggy Pop was a guitarist. After seeing them twice this year, they're getting bumped up to my must see band list.

On Repeat...

Minibeast - "High Sea"

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Somehow Peter Prescott of Mission of Burma and Volcano Suns has another band that I never knew about. Minibeast already released an album that I completely missed back in 2012, and they are currently at work on the follow up, Free Will. Based on a track from the upcoming album, "High Sea," Minibeast shares some common sonic ground with Mission of Burma, but with an added emphasis on the groovy side of things. It's basically the noise and dissonance of Burma but heard through a 60s surf groove, as if Frankie and Annette were punks. You can listen to "High Sea" below. Minibeast currently have a Kickstarter to help fund the final production of Free Will. You can get more information on that here . It should be out sometime in June.
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The Beths - "Mother, Pray for Me"

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Photo by Annabel Kean For their latest single, New Zealand's The Beths have released "Mother, Pray for Me." This is a heartbreaking ballad consisting of Elizabeth Stokes' vocals and guitar with just the slightest hint of organ. It's a deeply personal song for Stokes, made obvious with how intimately the song comes across. It truly feels almost confessional, and it's quite simply beautiful. The Beths are most known for huge little indie rock gems perfect for bopping along to, but "Mother, Pray for Me" is quite the opposite. Stokes' vocals and lyrics are right up front on this one, and I can't imagine it any other way. Elizabeth Stokes says of her latest single: “I cried the whole time writing it. It's not really about my mother, it's about me — what I hope our relationship is, what I think it is, what it maybe actually is, and what I can or can't expect out of it.   “My mother is a first gen Indonesian immigrant, and very Catholic....
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Midnight Peg - "Thirstland"

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Photo by Cecil Sykes Midnight Peg are an Edmonton, AB based band that are referred to as "madhouse punk." Their latest single, "Thirstland," is a just barely under control two minute burst of punk. You have guitar riffs that will make you think of At the Drive In, and somewhat spoken and yelled vocals which create a feeling of chaos throughout. This is a loud and angry track that is completely in your face. But, unlike most tracks this loud and punk based, "Thirstland" still keeps a sense of art in their music. Midnight Peg feel like a higher class of loud, angry punk rock. This one is great, with just enough of an emo undercurrent to make the song kind of melodic and almost palatable to a mainstream audience. You can listen to "Thirstland" below. Skinning is due out in October on Thousand Island Records. For more on Midnight Peg, check out the artist's website .
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