Bands of brothers

By MATT PARISH | March 10, 2010

They fit in nicely with the Hislop crew. The Phoenix has been singing the praises of brother Jonathan's post-rock Henry Gale lately, and Nassy's mathy fits keep getting better. And of course, there's Piles, a three-piece for now in the middle of another of their traditional bass-player crunches (current guy Dana Fowler is bolting): rivet-gun guitars, sprawling stream-of-conscious writing, pissed-off non sequitur gang vocals. Can you tell they've been enamored of Boston's smart-ass contingent of indie rock since forever?

Hislop spent his early years in Dorchester before his family moved out to Pembroke, but he'd head back into town to see then-girlfriend Alina. "I idolized bands like Helms who built scenes out of their own communities. I brought CDs home and said, 'Here's how I want our drums to sound.' Jonathan took them to school, and soon there were seventh-graders on the South Shore buying Wicked Farleys patches."

This Saturday's event will be a trip down memory lane, a bold look into the future, and a remarkable show of unconditional home-town love, the kind Hislop's learned to dig for — though gently. He did run into Barlow one more time. "I asked if he remembered me from the River Rave show — 'I had the Lou B. shirt!' He paused, looked up, and just said, 'Oh yeah.' And nothing else."

That's all right. That guy moved to LA anyway.

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