Bowery Boston presents
Doors: 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm
This event is 18 and over. Patrons under 18 admitted if accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Please note: bags or backpacks larger than a purse are prohibited.
Tickets on sale now!
Tickets available at AXS.COM, or by phone at 855-482-2090. No service charge on tickets purchased in person at The Sinclair Box Office Wednesdays-Saturdays 12-7PM.
***
***
Hop Along
Hop Along has had multiple lives. First conceptualized as a freak-folk solo act by Frances Quinlan, it progressed towards a fuller sound with the addition of Mark Quinlan on drums, Tyler Long on bass and Joe Reinhart (Algernon Cadwallader, Dogs on Acid) on guitar. Emerging as one of music’s most unique songwriters, the captivating vignettes Frances has weaved tell vivid stories of desperation and weary awakening. Her powerful voice is a spellbinding entity all it’s own, celebratory and raw, and one that can’t be shaken away.
Their new album, Painted Shut, (out on May 5, 2015 via Saddle Creek) is their 2nd full-length (preceded by Get Disowned in 2012). However, this release marks their first time creating as a full-formed entity, arranging everything as a group. It was co-produced, recorded and mixed by John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, etc.) in the great cities of Philadelphia and Brooklyn, and incidentally finished in the shortest span of time the band has ever made anything.
Like their debut, Painted Shut is a series of accounts, a procession of fleeting and repeating characters. However, it diverges from its predecessor in its close-up, controlled approach (most of the album features the band recording live), and more focused portraiture. Whereas Get Disowned calls forth a dreamy collage of protagonists in a tone that’s often anthemic and surreal, Painted Shut is a grounded, less merciful image of many struggling adults (and children) in a severe landscape.
Often depicted in Painted Shut are the two lives of legendary (though generally unknown) musicians, Buddy Bolden and Jackson C. Frank, who were plagued with mental illness until their penniless deaths. Included are accounts of more everyday poverty, abuse, greed; and banal, sub-par behavior. Society is unveiled as a structure that, in reality, was most certainly not built with everyone in mind. Clearly this is difficult subject matter. Yet the songs themselves move unencumbered and easily, forming angular pop anti-anthems, at times jubilant as well as irreverent. Somehow, they are not sad songs. There is joy, in the abandon of Frances’ unforgettable voice, in the exulting choruses. One wakes to a sky that is a bright, ageless blue. It’s morning and so clear outside that multitudes of lives can be seen, in focus despite the distance. All of this is viewed through a window sealed with cracked paint that cannot be opened on either side. That is how we must often view the lives of others, especially when it comes to people who have lived and gone from this world. That’s another story.
***
Saintseneca
At the intriguing intersection of metaphysics and rock and roll, you will find the new Saintseneca album Such Things. While the thematic concerns of the record address the very nature of human consciousness, the decidedly hook-centric sound serves as a delightfully visceral counterpoint, infusing the band’s unique melding of folk, punk and epic rock with a very earthly sense of groove. At its core, Such Things is entirely accessible and undeniably powerful, unquestionably Saintseneca’s most cohesive, catchy output, and a work that cements the band’s singer songwriter Zac Little’s status as one of modern indie music’s most thoughtful and talented artists.
Bolstering the more streamlined “pop” compositions is a raucous and fuzzed out sonic palette that beautifully accentuates the record’s power of engagement.“When we were getting ready to record with Mike (Mogis of Bright Eyes), I told him I wanted the songs to be filtered through sixties psychedelic pop,” Little explains. “Not like a throwback record, because I didn’t write those type of songs. What we wanted were modern songs that sounded like a band had gone back in time to record them.”
Since its origin in 2007 as an teenage bluegrass outfit in Appalachian Ohio, then its growth to a large, multi-instrumental live rock and folk collective whose onstage experiments would find their way to tape on 2011’s Last, and then the more traditional approach of writing and recording in making Dark Arc, Saintseneca has largely been Little’s machine. A meticulous, tireless craftsman, he began writing for Such Things by demoing songs composed of anywhere from two to one-hundred-and-fifty tracks, which he then shared with his bandmates to serve as reference points for their own invented parts.
“Even though it might seem like this singular vision, at the core my creative strategy for the band is one that inherently involves other people. I think the best work I’ll make involves working that way. Ultimately, by involving other people that are really talented and that I admire, we’ll come up with something that will transcend what any individual would be capable of. To me that’s the ultimate creative goal; to have that element of spontaneity and the culmination of multiple minds.”