If It's Too Loud...

Once again, Something in the Way took over Roadrunner in Boston for two days of killer live music. Twelve bands took over two stages on Sunday, with a surprisingly diverse line up of shoegaze, alt-country, hardcore, emo, slowcore, and more. For all the people that complain about people being on their phones for entire shows, they need to check out Something in the Way, which saw an audience mostly made up of teens and twentysomethings moshing, stage diving, and crowd surfing for hours. It's a much needed relief from the tail end of winter, and the freezing cold. Here were our highlights of Sunday. Glixen Phoenix's Glixen opened up the show and were the perfect way to ease the crowd into a day of mostly heavy music. Taking the stage at 1:30 pm, their version of heavy shoegaze got the crowd ready without being too heavy as we got prepared for nine hours of music. I've been praising Glixen for a while now, and their live show simply can't be beat. Drummer Keire Johnson sti...

Photo by Marie Lin While they did release a compilation of EPs earlier this year, as of right now Sheer Mag have yet to release a proper full length. That is all about to change, as they just announced the July 14 release of Need to Feel Your Love .  Sheer Mag have a unique sound. While the Philadelphia based band is widely considered to be punk, they have a lot more in common with 70s Motown like The Jackson 5 than they do The Clash or Minor Threat. That's truly evident with the first single off of Need to Feel Your Love, "Just Can't Get Enough." It's a fun, wildly danceable song, and I just can'r even imagine anyone moshing at all to this, and let's not forget that I was going to shows in the 90s when people were moshing to Letters to Cleo and G. Love & Special Sauce. I think the most punk aspect of "Just Can't Get Enough" is attitude. Somehow they turn what feels like a truly earnest love song about being in love into this in you...

I swear this is a positive review. I really do like Compilation LP  by Sheer Mag. Anything I say negatively is purely me being a grumpy middle aged man telling the kids to get off his lawn. All of the information in Sheer Mag's press release refers to them as punk. I don't really hear the underground punk in this, but, like I said, I'm a middle aged white male. The music is edgy and noisy, but I don't know if I'm finding it hard enough to be punk. But this is a new generation that looks at Blink 182 and Reel Big Fish as "old school" punk. You'll see in the video below that the music doesn't come close to matching the pits that apparently happen at their shows, but in the 90s people used to beat the shit out of each other to Letters to Cleo, so what did we know back then? Ok, old man grumbling aside, Sheer Mag's collection of their first three EPs, Compilation LP , is fairly great. They have this great groovy sound, like someone mixed 70s ...