If It's Too Loud...

Nostalgia can be weird. of Montreal were never one of the bands I was obsessed with in the mid 00's, but I always liked them. They always seemed like they'd be a fun band to see live, but I never quite got around to it. 2025 is the twentieth anniversary of their hit album The Sundlandic Twins , and as soon as they announced their current tour would be a full album performance, I knew I wanted to go when it hit Boston. Being an indie rock snob, I typically see shows but not performances. Tuesday night was a performance. There were video screens throughout Royale showing moving images made up of The Sunlandic Twins ' cover artwork, and before singer/guitarist Kevin Barnes took the stage, a pair clad in white skintight costumes took the stage with the images of the figures on the album cover projected onto them. The band including Barnes were wearing mostly pink and red, giving the entire evening the feel of being more of an affair than a concert. (A number of people in attend...

Photo by Ken Sears Last time Caroline Rose played Boston was April 10, 2023. On April 7, 2024, they made their turn to Royale on the final pass of their tour to support their excellent album The Art of Forgetting. Despite touring to promote the same album in the same room and almost the exact same date, Sunday night was a completely different experience. In 2023, Caroline Rose played The Art of Forgetting from start to finish for their main set and then came back for some other favorites for an encore. As great as the album is, it's a heavy album inspired by a difficult break up and voicemails Rose received as their grandmother slowly lost her mind. Rose still focused Sunday night's setlist on The Art of Forgetting , but played more favorites from previous albums LONER and Superstar. The first six songs were from their latest masterpiece, but they brought out "Getting to Me" for the seventh song, and the mood lightened substantially. A Caroline Rose show is a celebrat...

Photo by Ken Sears Even though it's happened, I still can't believe I got to see Kathleen Hanna come through Boston twice in three months. Bikini Kill played back in April, and Le Tigre swung through this past Monday. Maybe the entire concept of seeing Bikini Kill and Le Tigre mere months apart, or maybe it was that the show had been announced six months earlier, but I almost kept forgetting it was happening. It did happen, and it was glorious. The band opened with "My Art," a song they had not yet played on this tour. They ended up stopping it as there was some mistake, which led to a discussion of how much they liked the Netflix show Starting Over , and then Small Wonder got brought up before they realized they should get back to playing. This being Le Tigre, the crowd did not get upset at all and were willing to go along with anything. At one point Kathleen Hanna said that she wanted the night to feel like a basement party, and despite the show being at the two tho...

Photo by Ken Sears I've been going to Caroline Rose shows for a few years now, and they've always been a bit of a showperson. From back when they were playing the two hundred forty person Great Scott with a bunch of red items on stage (fake flowers, a stuffed cat with red on its mouth, red stuffed animals, etc) to playing The Sinclair with all of the same items, but everything awash in red light, I've come to expect a show. But nothing prepared me for what I saw Thursday night at Royale. Caroline Rose has been posting about the light show they designed in preparation for this tour. I'm not a big fan of complicated lights, and most shows I go to tend to be pretty low tech. But Rose's light show and stage set up complicated the music perfectly. This tour is a performance of The Art of Forgetting in its entirety, as it is meant to be heard as a piece of art. The stage set up featured Rose out front with two guitars and a keyboard. All other performers were behind scree...

Photo by Ken Sears Despite Drive-By Truckers being my favorite active band, I almost skipped this show. I already had a lot going on in April, including a ticket to see Guerilla Toss the night before. I had just seen Drive-By Truckers back in August at Green River Festival. I'm not a huge fan of Royale, as it's more of a dance club that sometimes has bands instead of live music venue. I obviously wanted to go, but I was on the fence. Finally I decided I'd go if they added an artist that I really, really wanted to see to the show, and I gave myself the example of Lydia Loveless. Well... they added Lydia Loveless, so I went. And I'm glad I did, or I would have missed one of the best nights of music of my life. Except for singing a couple of songs after a screening of Who is Lydia Loveless? (Coincidentally five years ago almost to the day of this show), I hadn't seen Lydia Loveless live since a glorious weekend of two shows in a row in 2015. A lot has changed for Lovel...

I first discovered The Jesus Lizard way back in 1996 when they opened for Rage Against the Machine at the Wallace Civic Center in Fitchburg, MA. My obsession came later (I wasn't ready for them at that point in my life) and truly peaked during their reunion tour in 2009. I had resigned myself to never see them again after that show. David Yow said as much, saying they'd only reunite if anyone paid them an obscene amount of money. Luckily Riot Fest apparently did that, and while ramping up for that festival they came through Boston last Friday night. Seeing that it's been twenty years since their last album, and nine since their last tour, I have to begrudgingly admit this night was pure nostalgia. For a band that hasn't toured in nine years, they were mind blowingly tight. Yow repeatedly declared they were the best band in the world, and if you were there you would believe them. No matter how great they sounded or how many times Yow dove on top of the crowd, it took...

Despite being a fan of Belly since the early 90's, I never got a chance to see them live. They had called it quits before I was really going to shows, so I missed out. I've seen Tanya Donelly a bunch of times, but never Belly. I had to miss the 2016 reunion because of a family vacation. Luckily, it wasn't a one-off tour, so last Thursday I finally got my chance. Belly currently tours in an odd way that works out for them. They don't have an opening act, but instead play two one hour sets with a twenty minute break in between. As much as I love an up and coming opener, can anyone really argue with two hours of Belly? And what a two hour show it was. If you haven't seen Donelly perform live for a while, you forget just how captivating her voice can be. In contrast to Donelly's angelic voice was Gail Greenwood headbanging through her set while playing bass, possibly left over from her time with L7. The band played with a large LED screen behind them, mostly dis...