If It's Too Loud...

Crystal Ballroom is a fairly new venue that opened up within the Somerville Theater that seems to be more of a performance space than a live music venue. They've hosted concerts, but also burlesque and other performances. Based on what has been booked there, the promoters seem more concerned with art and quality than just getting a Sublime cover band once a month to sell the place out. This was very apparent on Saturday with the triple bill of Snapped Ankles, Gloin, and Muzzins. We've written about Muzzins before, and they were the main reason I was in attendance for this show. Despite having only two songs out, the band had a pretty die hard fanbase show up for being a brand new band. The three piece led by Rayna Jhaveri were a perfect fit to open this triple bill of oddball bands, with their own sound taking pieces of alt-rock, electronic, funk, hip hop, jazz, and punk into one cohesive sound. Their stage presence belied their relative newness, and they played like a band tha...

Photo by Ken Sears Despite Drive-By Truckers being one of my all time favorite bands, it's been roughly six years since I've been able to see them live. Weather issues have derailed the last two times I was supposed to see them, but luckily last Saturday was devoid of any weather issues, so I was finally able to see them again. The show started off a little... off. For the first four songs ("Made Up English Oceans," "Rosemary With a Bible and a Gun," "Slow Ride Argument," and "Heroin Again") the band seemed tense. Maybe it's because three of those songs are off Drive-By Truckers's latest album and haven't been played live much yet, or maybe it's that they're just dark, slow songs, but they just didn't seem like themselves. It's a little odd, since those appear to be the opening songs on every show of the tour so far. The band seemed to start getting their groove back on the Mike Cooley sung "3 Dimes ...