If It's Too Loud...

January is a dead zone for live music in Boston. Everyone is still recovering/broke from Christmas and New Year's, the college kids aren't back in town, and it's cold and miserable. The only good thing about the month is that local bands have a time to shine, and Saturday night there were at least four shows I was debating going to. The one that won out featured two bands I have seen before but knew I wanted to see again: Kooked Out and The Ghouls. Opening the night was a band I was completely unfamiliar with: River Sang Wild. The Boston based trio play a style of blues-based alt-rock that seemed pretty standard at first, but got better and better as their set went on. It seemed like the rest of the crowd agreed with me, as each break between songs was greeted with a stronger applause each time. They're a solid live band that has somehow escaped my attention despite having a strong social media following. My only complaint of their set is that just as I went from "...

Part of the great thing about the return of the Rock & Roll Rumble is seeing bizarre four band bills that end up working perfectly. I doubt we'll ever see the likes of Tysk Tysk Task, Kooked Out, One Fall, and Not Bad Not Well all playing together again, and that's a shame. Sometimes the most oddball groupings of bands make the most cohesive shows. Tysk Tysk Task opened the evening, and I was a bit nervous for their performance. Their regular drummer was unavailable that night, and they had to use a fill in drummer, which is never ideal... unless that drummer is Cutty from Paper Tigers. With only five days of practice, the show should not have gone well at all, but five seconds into their set and all trepidation I had was gone. Cutty seemed to inject a new sense of excitement into the band, and Samantha Hartsel and Amy Gee seemed to up their game to match that excitement. Plus, turns out Cutty is a phenomenal drummer. Tysk Tysk Task's songs are ever evolving, even from ...