ep1
ON TIME Earthquake Party took their high-energy punky pop into the wee hours at an Allston basement show. 

Every underground scene has its "house bands" — local favorites that play tirelessly, fill slots on stacked line-ups every weekend, and amass a dedicated following of fans and friends in their scenes. They make up the fabric of local DIY. They aren't quite yet breaking onto the national indie-rock consciousness, but they might soon. Often in Boston, these sorts of underground house bands actually play in houses. That was the case on Saturday, when four of these like-minded community shapers — two from Massachusetts, and two from Brooklyn — played an Allston basement show attended by 60 or so.

It was a late night. The first of four, Brooklyn quartet Shark?, didn't start their set of classic garage-rock-inspired jams until after 10:30. They were followed by one of Massachusetts's best new bands, Northampton's Speedy Ortiz. The basement was most packed for Speedy's set of guitar-oriented slacker pop, heavy '90s jams with catchy choruses for head-bopping, or — at this show — push pits.

Brooklyn trio Life Size Maps set up at 1 am, then tore through a set of vocalist/guitarist Mike McKeever's meandering noise-pop melodies, completed by Rob Karpay's soaring electronic cello. A standout was "Weird Luck," the title track from a February 2012 EP. This was one of the band's last shows with Jordyn Blakely — one of the tightest drummers playing around Brooklyn right now — who will soon leave to focus on her other band, NY garage pop group Night Manager, and be replaced by Matt Gaffney.

It felt lucky that Earthquake Party's high-energy set of punky pop songs wasn't happening until nearly 3 am — had it been earlier, the place would have been uncomfortably packed, for sure. It was one of the most solid basement shows Allston's seen in a while; the type where you leave wanting to shout about every band that played, and how painfully underexposed they all are.

  Topics: Live Reviews , Music, Arts, Allston,  More more >
| More


Most Popular
ARTICLES BY LIZ PELLY
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   ICEAGE | YOU'RE NOTHING  |  February 11, 2013
    There's something intriguing about the ways Copenhagen punk band Iceage seem simultaneously to care so much and so little.
  •   BEE-HAVIOR: ''FESTOONING THE INFLATABLE BEEHIVE'' AT BU'S 808 GALLERY  |  February 06, 2013
    An art gallery may seem like an unconventional space for discussions on insect behavior, but Maria Molteni maintains beekeeping is as much an art as a science.
  •   LA BIG VIC | COLD WAR  |  February 01, 2013
    In 2011, La Big Vic released Actually, a retro-futuristic avant-pop album playing skillfully with classical and experimental influences.
  •   KATIE CRUTCHFIELD'S TRAVELS  |  January 30, 2013
    Waxahatchee's American Weekend was my favorite record of 2012, an 11-song collection of downcast acoustic-guitar ballads laced with raw, pointed poetry, home-recorded over a week at Katie Crutchfield's childhood home in Birmingham, Alabama.
  •   THE HISTORY OF APPLE PIE | OUT OF VIEW  |  January 29, 2013
    London-based quintet the History of Apple Pie's debut LP for Marshall Teller Records is an essential spin for fans of Dino Jr. riffs and early Slumberland indie-pop.

 See all articles by: LIZ PELLY