Previous Article

Next Article

Live Reviews

Out: An electronic séance with Hooray for Earth and Zambri at Great Scott

CHECK HIS ID Regardless of where Noel Heroux calls home, Hooray for Earth remain awesome.

We in Boston enjoy reminding others that Hooray for Earth originally formed here, so we can still call them a Boston band. To this, New Yorkers will often offer a retort such as, "Boston's a magnet for transients, and people who leave immediately after they finish college. I don't think you're entitled to weird, honorary ownership of everyone who used to live in Boston. Noel Heroux came to NYC, like, almost five years ago. He decided to stay. You're not getting him back."

But when somewhere around nine frickin' people, including the sisters Zambri from the eponymous HFE buddy-band, had piled onstage for a towering, gleaming shakedown of HFE's "No Love," it was hard to remember why we care where any of these people live. "Fucking awesome" are really the only pair of words that aptly describe Saturday's show at Great Scott. Heroux and Co. went electronic a few years ago, but they've come full-circle into something more epic and bolder than mere dance music or indie rock. The MGMT comparisons seem all-the-more insipid, considering Hooray for Earth annihilate MGMT.

Seth Kasper of Zambri remains indisputably Bostonian, although his band remains indisputably New Yorkian. During previous eras, he drummed in Hooray for Earth and Wild Light, but currently he summons the thunder that freaks out underneath Zambri's sparkly strangeness, and he was even pulverizing canvases for Bang Camaro the previous night at Brighton Music Hall. It's not surprising that he's in demand and commutes up and down Interstate 95 to make sweet music. The spastic exactitude he applied to some of the peppier cuts off Zambri's notably zazz-ified inaugural long-player House of Baasa could make you say, "I thought this part was programmed. How the fuck is he playing live drums for this song?"

Earlier that night, Joseph D'Agostino of Cymbals Eat Guitars had ventured a performance that I'll liken to listening to Bush's 1994 power-ballad "Glycerine." This, I dug. And I didn't care where he lives either.