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Even in an age of excessive internet awareness and never-ending blog hype, it's easy to miss a young touring band on their first stop through town. So you're forgiven if you slept on Weekend last week at O'Brien's in Allston, a show that might eventually rank up there with the time A Place To Bury Strangers played to about six persons several years ago at nearby Great Scott. The comparison is appropriate beyond their subtle introduction to Boston, since this San Francisco trio craft the same pulsating sonic assault on the senses as their Brooklyn brethren. Their debut LP channels the usual suspects on the lo-fi post-punk/noise family tree, but though the debt to standards like early Joy Division and the Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy era is obvious, Weekend also carry the dark, static-rock torch relit by No Age, the Prids, and the Vandelles. It's a pleasure to unwrap the piercing distortion and fuzz in Sports' first two tracks — standouts "Coma Summer" and "Youth Haunts," each exceeding 12 minutes — and discover a cavernous post-punk dirge. The shoegazy noise genre is again slowly creeping toward the pop spectrum, and Sports might push it even farther toward the indie mainstream, but it needs a new tag — let's call it blackout pop.
