If It's Too Loud...

We're huge fans of Abigail Lapell here at If It's Too Loud... Her latest album, Anniversary , is all but guaranteed a spot in our end of the year lists, so when she announced a tour that hit three New England locations this past weekend, we had to check out at least one of them. The one that ended up working out the best was Saturday night at the legendary Club Passim. Abigail Lapell's music was even more mesmerizing in person. Playing solo, she captivated the crowd right from the start. It helps that Club Passim never gets a bad crowd, with an audience that is always attentive and responsive. That worked perfectly for Lapell's set of delicate Canadian folk songs. Playing a large number of songs from her latest album, Lapell just has this natural on stage presence that leaves you desperate to hear more. Songs like "Count On Me" and "Rattlesnake" (my personal favorite from Anniversary ) were even more engaging in a live setting.  Something unexpected ...

Photo by Julian Brier I became completely enamored with Kiltro back in April when I first heard "Guanaco." The mixture of Latin folk and shoegaze was nothing like anything I'd heard before, and each single just sucked me in more and more. Since Underbelly was released earlier this month, I've played it an embarrassing amount of times, and get more and more into it each time. Sometimes you can just tell when a band will be amazing live, so I had to check them out when they came to Boston at the legendary Club Passim. I certainly wasn't expecting the configuration Kiltro is currently touring as. Chris Bowers was on vocals, guitar, keyboard, and loops, and was joined by a bass player, a second guitarist, and two drummers. In case that wasn't enough percussion for you, Bowers also used loops to record and play finger snaps, hand claps, tapping on his guitar, etc. Between the two drum sets, large effects pedal set up, keyboards, and a five person band, there wasn...

I absolutely adored Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno's debut album back in 2021. It hit that perfect sweet spot for me of being a modern take on traditional folk. Since it was released in March of that year, I had been waiting for them to make it up to New England, but either they hadn't, or I completely missed it. (Could be either, it's been a weird two years.) As soon as I saw they had a few local dates, I knew I had to make it to one, and you just can't miss go wrong when it's at the legendary Club Passim. I had high expectations for the show, but once they started their set with "Will You," I knew they would be exceeded. Leva and Calcagno were at such ease playing together and are just naturally charismatic performers that it didn't quite feel like watching friends play music on a back porch... but it also didn't quite feel like a formal performance. It was somewhere in between, like we were all watching something truly special just for us. Songs...

It may not be my normal music of choice, but I love Mali Obomsawin's new album Sweet Tooth. My taste in music can lean pretty far on the experimental side of things, but a three piece suite of music that is a mixture of jazz, folk, blues, Native cultures, etc. is new territory for me. But, I'm all about new experiences, so I headed out to Club Passim to experience it live. Mali Obomsawin's Sweet Tooth is about Indigenous resistance, which she made quite clear while discussing the songs. She discussed how large the Wabanaki territory once was and how they are now limited to two reservations near Quebec, the influence (or attempted influence) of Jesuits on the Wabanaki, and joked about the lack of cultural relevance of Boston. It was definitely a night of challenging music, with plenty of discordance and experimenting going on with the music. As experimental as the recorded album is, live it was both more experimental and less experimental. At times the 6tet strayed away from...

I almost skipped this show. With all of the horrific events of this week, I was in a fog all day Wednesday. I had little to zero motivation to do anything at work and just kind of went through the motions of my daily life. I certainly didn't expect to enjoy myself watching live music, and figured I might as well spend my evening doom scrolling while half paying attention to whatever I watched on TV. But... I headed into Cambridge and it ended up being just what I needed. Somehow, even though I've been going to concerts in the Boston area regularly for over twenty five years and I've been listening to folk consistently for over ten, this was only my second time going to Club Passim. For those of you who don't know, Club Passim opened in 1958 as Club 47 and is just a legendary folk venue in Harvard Square. It's commencement week at Harvard, and as I walked through groups of graduating students and their parents, their cheer and hopefulness was fairly contagious. I...