STARTING SMALL: They recently sold out Avalon, but not long ago they were playing the Norwood American Legion. |
Back on Monday August 14, when Kenmore Square was the usual pre–Red Sox game Tasmanian clusterfuck, a smaller but no less devoted crowd began to form outside Avalon. At four in the afternoon. A full three hours before doors opened, and probably another four, even five, before the Receiving End of Sirens took the stage. The kids outside the club and the Fenway faithful “are the same breed of fan,” said singer/bassist Brendan Brown when I caught up with him backstage. “Look at how fans are for the Red Sox and how fans are for any other team anywhere else. The kids here are just way more loyal.” Attesting to his argument was the time the line started to form, the size of the crowd around the Sirens’ merch booth, and the packed room when the band came on.After a year and a half on tour, TREOS took the stage to the Cheers theme, and it was clear they were glad to be back. Hailing from Western Mass, the members met at Northeastern, and they honed their sound in dorm rooms. At Avalon, they powered through a set of epic post-hardcore with electronic flourishes, blasting forth three-part guitar harmonies. Their debut, Between the Heart and the Synapse (Triple Crown), is drive-with-your-windows-down, sing-along-as-loud-as-you-can, bang-the-steering-wheel, see-people-stare-as-you-drive-by-but-who-cares-this-shit-rocks rock. And that’s exactly what they delivered at Avalon. They open for Taking Back Sunday in a WFNX free “Disorientation” concert this Saturday, September 9.
What’s interesting is that TREOS have amassed loyal fans across the country. They’re one of those odd “local” bands who garner just as much national attention. And that didn’t come about from being plucked by Fallout Boy and thrust into national superstardom à la Panic! At the Disco. In fact, small shows like the ones here at the Norwood American Legion and the ICC are how TREOS found that national audience. As an unsigned band dealing with the loss of their first frontman, and with nothing more than a three-song EP to support, they hit the road, sold a couple thousand copies of the three-songer, and played all kinds of gigs.
“I specifically remember playing a huge venue in Athens,” Brown says, “in front of two people, not including the homeless dude who snuck in.” But all it takes is for those two kids to tell two more kids and for all of them to check out the band’s MySpace or Purevolume pages. “By the time we made it out to California, we were drawing a few hundred kids.” Unlike MySpace creation Lily Allen, TREOS used their Internet buzz to win fans without suffering any major backlash. They’d taken full advantage of playing those tiny, small-venue shows, where the connection between audience and band is immediate and intimate.
“When we were starting out, no club really wanted to have us, so we would play a lot of halls outside Boston,” says singer/guitarist Alex Bars. “I am almost glad we did it that way, because I feel like it was a way to get more personal at shows than at clubs, talk to more kids at the shows.”
