This Weekend, Friday Oct. 14 – Sunday Oct. 16, Bodies of Water Shows & The Boston Counter Cultural Compass present HOMEGROWN III: Boston’s Underground Music Festival featuring: Bobb Trimble’s Flying Spiders, Major Stars, Cuffs, Quilt (pictured above), Skimask, Pile, Poltergeist Friction, Reports, plus many more of the most exciting bands currently coming out of Boston and New England.

All the shows are all ages. For complete information including each day’s line-up, venue location, and pricing, head over to the Homegrown official website.

–Chrissy Prisco

The three-piece indie-folk band Mercies took their album Three Thousand Days to the road two weeks ago and stopped by O’Brien’s pub in Allston where I had the pleasure of watching them perform. At first, I had trouble envisioning how the band would translate their acoustic-based, natural sound created in the “Barn” to a live setting, but I was enlightened and pleased once they began playing. With a slew of subtle stomp boxes, some beautiful hollow body electric guitars, and reverberating vocals, Mercies were able to recreate, and take to a new level, the huge sound of the album, inside the confines of a bar with a 70-person capacity. Beforehand, I was able to catch up with the band and ask them a few questions about how they were able to write and record an album in the middle of the winter in a barn and where the band is heading next.

Click here to read Michael Giordano’s interview with Mercies.

One in a series of performance events curated by Singer Mali (of Jaggery), Org: Asylum brings together artists and performers from diverse backgrounds and diverse media to explore the issues of insanity and sanctuary.  The second in the Org series to take place at Oberon (after June’s powerfully moving Org: Murder Ballads) Org: Asylum includes a short film shot on location at a local abandoned state mental hospital, a butoh interpretation of Vaslav Nijisky, a body-painting storyteller sharing tales of art-making and suicidal ideation, and much more.

Jaggery is doing a full, multimedia set (with film and dancers, etc).  Local band Ginger Ibex is performing, accompanying mimedancer Karen Montanaro (of Maine).  The MCs (Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt) will be incorporating music into their pieces. 

Featuring:
Michael Pope
Bryan Papciak
Jaggery
Karen Montanaro
Ginger Ibex
UnAmerika’s Sweetheart Karin Webb
Hello Dust
and more TBA

Friday, September 30th
Oberon
2 Arrow Street
Cambridge, MA
18+, doors: 7:30pm; show starts at 9pm
$20 seating, $15 standing click here to purchase tickets

New Hampshire’s Tan Vampires is a six-piece rock band that released their first LP last week. It is called For Physical Fitness, and it makes me sleepy. 

With a couple of dramatic exceptions (Sweep Up the Pieces; Customer Satisfaction Survey), the album is comprised of subdued, slow-burning rock.  On the top end there’s occasional, just-there lines of keyboard, marimba, or organ that lilt throughout the songs, but those bits are rarely up-front enough to make Tan Vamps into a band that one would associate more with keys than guitars. The guitar sound itself ranges widely: from slowly crunching distortion, to plucky acoustic folk, to spare, icy twangs. It’s really notable that they are able to cover so much musical ground with their guitars while also rarely deviating from their very distinctive mellow vibe. The band has obviously spent a lot of time considering the finer points of their production and honing their sound. 

Lead singer Jake Mehrmann has a plaintive and clear voice that is an excellent match for the wistful, autumnal songs that predominate the album. Thanks to the often-subdued instrumentation, it is he that most often steals the show in the songs, sometimes taking on melodies with little instrumental assistance behind him, the rest of the band plugging along with their spare, rhythmic playing, and his voice flying away on the back of his heavy, intense lyrics. 

There’s a little something for everyone here, be they folk fans, Modest Mouse fans, Death Cab fans, or anyone who’s feeling a little moody. It’s the kind of music that feels like a hug, but doesn’t get boring after a few songs.

–Alex Pinto

In high school my friends and I used to joke about pioneering the genre “science-rock.” We covered the Bill Nye the Science Guy theme song in our short-lived band, Igneous Rocks! However, I have to tip my hat to the first real science-rock I’ve heard: When Particles Collide, a rock ‘n roll duo from Bangor, Maine consisting of Sasha Alcott and Chris Viner

First equation: punk-rock high school chemistry teacher + long time jazz performer = [the perfect television show (Breaking Bad combined with School of Rock) X Pixies rockability]. With lines such as, “Grams contain avogadro’s number ya heard? That’s 6012 X × 10^23!” I picture myself in the coolest chemistry class of my life. If I had a rock and roll star as my chem teacher in high school I think I would be on my way to a science degree right now.

The duo strays away from science after the first song in their 6-song album and focuses on their obvious rock and roll roots. Listening closely I get vibes from all over the rock spectrum from Rush to the White Stripes to moments that they can call all their own. As a jazz-rooted drummer, Chris is able to add a unique spin of complex, flowing beats to compliment Sasha’s lively and melodic vocals.

Sure to be a great performance to witness (and sure to make you recall all those formulas you forgot since high school) make sure to catch them at a local bar in Bangor. If you won’t be up there any time soon, stream their 6-song EP here.

–Mike Giordano

High Pop‘s new album, Hippie Speed Ball, is available to stream on CMJ. High Pop is Sean Posila and Jordan Caulfield. They muster up fuzzy garage pop, written for the very dregs of youth culture which they sprout from. All their songs are written and recorded in their basement. At any given time, you can find them somewhere between Boston and New York, loosely attending universities. Their songs are fast and short, but their music is forever. It’s kind of like the Beach Boys on crack.

Listen to their single, Drip from the Sea, below:

High Pop – Drip from the Sea

–Chrissy Prisco

Meghan Chiampa of Desert Race Boston and poet/songwriter Jade Sylvan (pictured above) present a night of tribute to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut Jr. tonight, September 22nd, at Precinct in Union Square.

Performers include Space Balloons (Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola), Somerville Symphony Orkestar, touring author Daphne Gottlieb, (Dear Dawn, Soft Skull Press), Boston Poetry Slam-master, Simone Beaubien, and poet James Caroline (Boston Phoenix Poll Best Local Author).

Full list of performers:
Music by: Space Balloons, Somerville Symphony Orkestar, Connor Wood & Jade Sylvan
Poetry by: Daphne Gottlieb, Simone Beaubien, James Caroline, The Duende Project, Charles Coe, Jade Sylvan & Meghan Chiampa
Shadow-puppet theater by: Woellert & Clark
Cabaret by: Scarlett Strawberry
Lightshow by: Dawn Gabriel
Paintings/Spoken Word by: Meghan Chiampa

For more information on all performers click here.

Precinct, 9/22, 7:30pm, $8, 21+

–Chrissy Prisco

Boston’s The Lights Out are hitting the road to play their new concept album, Primetime, that tells the story of a band on the road. The band recently had a song featured on an MTV prison-based show, Cuff’d. The Lights Out also caught national attention for a social media stunt they pulled using the dating site OK Cupid to gain new fans. As if they couldn’t get anymore random, on October 29, they are doing a zombie Michael Jackson show at Church to celebrate Halloween.

The tour dates are below:

·9/23 Holyoke, MA
·9/24 Dewy Beach, DE
·9/30 Boston (at Milky Way)
·10/6 NYC
·10/7 Trenton, NJ
·10/8 Philly
·10/9 DC
·10/13 NYC
·10/14 Albany

For complete show information, check out the band’s website.

–Chrissy Prisco

The Wandas have released their latest single, Longtime Running off their new self-titled album. Listen to it below. Also, be sure to catch the Wandas out on the road over the next two months on their headlining tour sponsored by Lands End Canvas in support of their critically acclaimed new album.

For a full list of tour dates check out the band’s website.

Longtime Running by the WANDAS

–Chrissy Prisco