If It's Too Loud...

Photo courtesy The Martha's Vineyard Ferries Indie rock supergroup The Martha's Vineyard Ferries have a new 7" due out February 28. The band, which includes Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine, The Lemonheads, Thurston Moore Group), Bob Weston (Shellac), and Elisha Weisner (Kahoots) chose to cover Strike Under's 1981 hardcore classic "Context." It may sound like a weird choice for an indie rock band, but The Martha's Vineyard Ferries have plenty of punk cred to pull it off. The cover might be slightly more indie rock than the original, but only just slightly. This is a great cover that stays faithful to Strike Under's, and it's great to see a band cut loose and play hard and fast like this. Chris Brokaw says of his band's latest single: "I became obsessed with the song 'Context' after seeing the film You Weren't There in 2007 in Chicago. It was a bit of a fluke that I was even there. The film documents the Chicago punk scene from 1977...

I somehow missed Mclusky the first time around, which doesn't make any sense to me since I was very active in finding new music in the early 2000's. I only recently discovered them thanks to Jeff, and they were always one of those bands that I just had to accept the fact that I missed out on. But, somehow the band reunited in 2014. So when a show at The Sinclair in Cambridge was announced for last Friday, I jumped at the chance to go despite feeling like an imposter fan. And what a show it was. I doubt there were any casual Mclusky fans at the show on Friday night, but if there were they are now diehards. Opening with "Fuck this Band" (which is literally the perfect choice, both because it's hilarious and helped ease the crowd into the show before the explosion of "Dethink to Survive"), Mclusky instantly had the crowd enraptured by their show. Quite often reunion shows can be very obvious cash grabs, with the band having no real interest in playing the m...