PSYCHED! Bassist Noah Bond is one third of the Fedavees experience. |
Last Wednesday night (March 7) at the Middlesex Lounge offered another celebratory occasion for Cambridge's long-standing psych scene, as pRIMORDIAL sOUNDS launched their new record label. Fedavees had the honor of releasing the sOUNDS' first seven-inch, and for good reason — they're the latest project of three local pillars of the music community: bassist Noah Bond of Doomstar! and Creaturos fame; drummer Tommy Allen, the male half of Drug Rug; and Tommy's brother, guitarist and vocalist Johnny Allen, the man who plays in Headband and serves delicious beverages at ZuZu.The trio orchestrated a set of hazed-out pop, diversifying their tempos and covering material from the new Solar Flower. What most distinguished them was their instrumental acumen. Each musician locked up in veteran fashion. Through croons and riffs, Johnny Allen produced a strange, reverbed breed of soul with his buffet of effects pedals, fitting precisely over the punchy rhythms of drum and bass. Johnny 's echoed vocals contributed character to each tune, but the songs themselves really took off when the threesome left space for melodic, almost ambient moments.
There were faster few-chord jams that could have easily found a home in the garage rather than the posh space of the Middlesex, and then there were more technical grooves, such as Solar Flower's B-side, "Freedom Freezes Over Again," in which Allen lent dark, slightly saturnine shades to the overall tunneled sound. A brighter, set-closing cover of a tune by Doomstar!'s Spenser Gralla embodied the attitude of the pRIMORDIAL sOUNDS family and the Cambridge music community as a whole.
The night's opener was local punk newcomer Colleen Green, whose Ramones-like heavy downstrokes offered a sharp contrast to her gentle vocal style, and came through best in her "I Wanna Be Degraded." Coy, but with a no-bullshit attitude, she was an instant hook for the Cambridge crowd and proved that her buzz is well deserved.
