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...

Towards the end of Modest Mouse's headlining set on Saturday night, Isaac Brock commented that he can normally ignore about half of the bands during a festival, but In Between Days just kept making him want to watch every band from the very start of the day. I ended up having the same experience. When I looked at the schedule, there were some bands I wasn't that familiar with or hadn't been able to get into previously, so I figured I'd have some downtime to casually eat some food from the food trucks, or play some free classic arcade games at the pop-up arcade, but instead for ten hours (ok, at one point I did stop to shove a quesadilla in my face for five minutes) I was just blown away watching band after band after band! I got there a couple of minutes late, and Quincy's own Gypsy Moths were already rocking the Arbella Insurance stage. Their classic Boston garage rock set the stage for the festival perfectly without sounding anything like any of the other bands on...

This is exactly the type of news we need while I watch snow fall in my New England neighborhood. Last year was the inaugural In Between Days festival. It was a one day festival with a great line up. For the festival's second year, they're expanding to two days and releasing one of the best line ups we've seen in years. The headliners for the festival are Modest Mouse and Lord Huron, with other If It's Too Loud... approved artists including Metric, Trampled By Turtles, Sunny Day Real Estate, Blitzen Trapper, Slothrust, and more! Plus, it includes an absolutely bonkers mix of local artists including Weakened Friends, Paper Tigers, Dutch Tulips, Carissa Johnson, Mint Green, Sweet Petunia, and more! Plus, there will be a vintage vendors market, a retro arcade, a vinyl record pop-up shop, and more. Taking place at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Quincy August 19 and 20, In Between Days is shaping up to be the New England summer festival of 2023. The gauntlet has definitely been...

Photo by Jake Gravbot You may not know Assertion yet, but you'll know William Goldsmith. It's the new project from the Sunny Day Real Estate founding member and ex-Foo Fighter. If you're a fan of either of Goldsmith's other bands, chances are you're going to like Assertion. Their first single, "Supervised Suffering" (which marks Goldsmith's return to music after taking ten years off), has the heartfelt proto-emo sensibilities of Sunny Day Real Estate and the stadium ready anthem feel of Foo Fighters. It's a huge sound that avoids the middle ground that much mainstream rock dips into while still having a sound that can appeal to people that still listen to actual radio, as well as us music elitists.  William Goldsmith says of the new project:  "A decade-long journey that started out walking away from music has led me right back to it and the very reason I started - but with a whole new appreciation and respect for it. I feel extremely fortunate...