Monday, January 20, 2025

Live Shows: The Ghouls, Kooked Out, and River Sang Wild, Deep Cuts, Medford, MA 1/18/25


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 "Hey, this isn't bad" to "This is actually great," they were just finishing up. Although, for an evening where the theme was getting to see bands for a second, better time, adding a new one to that list is kind of perfect.

The only time I saw Kooked Out before Saturday night was at the 2023 Rock and Roll Rumble. That night I kept swinging wildly between disliking what I was seeing and then suddenly really liking it, disliking it again, and then going back to enjoying it. Sometimes that was all during the same song. They're just a hard band to categorize and my music snobbery was showing that night. At the end of their set I was fairly certain I liked it, which made me want to see them again. At Deep Cuts they played as a trio, and while the set was once again all over the place, this time I was prepared. The hard part is for me to describe their sound. While Kooked Out has a relatively mainstream sound, they're mostly a punk band that incorporate surf rock, garage rock, blues, and occasionally metal into their songs. Some songs mostly stick to one genre, but most blend genres freely. One of their songs somehow had guitar that was both surf rock and bluesy. The thing that's truly great about a Kooked Out show is how much fun it is, as long as you don't try to overanalyze what's happening.

As much as I enjoy The Ghouls' singles, I was completely unprepared for how great they are as a live band. I saw them play maybe four songs at the Boston Music Awards in December and couldn't wait to see them play again. A full live show was even better. The Lowell band has almost too much fun playing live, and that energy and joy is infectious. They play a jangly pop version of punk. Despite being a young band, they've mastered that perfect spot of playing loose enough to be having fun and tight enough to be great that usually takes bands decades to find. They also have an incredibly dedicated fanbase, and it's hard not to get swept up by them (and why wouldn't you want to?) It's high energy music perfect for moshing or straight up dancing, and their punked up but spot on cover of George Michael's "Careless Whisper" will be a musical highlight of the young year that will be hard to beat.

2 comments:

  1. Ken - you’ve got the best local music blog around. Great write-up on this show. I had a blast at that show.

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