Allston got lucky Saturday night ... really lucky. Girls played their fourth show of their first US tour to a tightly packed and utterly appreciative Great Scott. From the instant frontman Christopher Owens stepped on stage to plug in his Rickenbacker, the crowd never took their eyes off the San Francisco quartet.

^{Click here for the full Say Anything slideshow (photo by Jerome Eno)}

Bad luck for indie-pop band the Pains of Being Pure at Heart: they drove up from New York for a concert in Southie on Sunday night, only to be greeted by a lackluster turnout, most likely due to the wet snow that soaked a city still moaning about how it didn’t get a summer.

Never did I think Wooderson from Dazed and Confused would be relevant to my life. “That's what I love about these college girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age,” the Matthew McConaughey character says while trolling the sidewalk outside the local pool hall, which could easily be the one outside the Middle East tonight.

I know there's a lot of other things in the news right now that people would rather talk about -- moon bombing, Obama's prize, CB Bucknor, Jim + Pam, etc. -- so I'll be brief in discussing last night's Grizzly Bear show.

The Grizz are in an interesting place right now. Sure, they're nominally a hip, "indie rock" band, but their sound is pretty far removed from the Pavements, Superchunks, and Neutral Milk Hotels of the world (to say nothing of Animal Collective or Deerhunter).

Not even a (minor) set malfunction could put a damper on the energy coursing through the House of Blues last night. Mid-set, one corner of the gigantic, glowing, psychedelic screen behind the band slipped free of its tether and made a break for the stage floor. “Looks like we’re having a Spinal Tap moment,” vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala remarked idly, as the stage crew hustled to pull the errant screen back into place.

Ra Ra Riot is a little more ra ra than riotous, but that's part of their charm. The six-piece act resembles a group of young band-geeks-cum-rock-stars (sort of), and it works for them. Their two female members rock a violin and a cello as if they were channeling Slash manhandling his axe, while shaggy-headed vocalist Wes Miles bops around the stage, alternately crooning into his mic and ruffling bassist Mathieu Santos’s hair with joyful abandon.

Okay, so the photo is from Friday, but still. More photos here.

On Saturday night, J Mascis and Co. took the stage with unassuming glory, and after taking their sweet time dorking around with their instruments, Mascis resolved the unformed chaos of their initial soundcheck with a plaintive little piffle of a riff.

The best compliment I can give the Dinosaur Jr. reunion is that I no longer find its greatness unusual. After almost five years, it's no longer a surprise that they still sound this good, the way it was when I first saw them back in 2006. Rather than being a great post-reunion band, they're just a great band, no qualifier necessary.