Star Ghost Dog: Exploding Party Favorites

Despite Star Ghost Dog's valiant attempt to hold us in the moment forever, time flew. Blame the songs. The 60-minute headlining set the band performed during their sold-out CD-release party upstairs at the Middle East last Saturday seemed to rush by in the bright, thrilling whirl of sonic sparklers, pinwheels, and other exploding party favors the band conjure on their luminescent new album, The Great Indoors (Catapult). Replete with hazy, head-buzzing textures, and casually emphatic hooks that sneak up on you early and often, Indoors brings into widescreen focus the indie-pop manna the group's 1998 debut, Happylove (Catapult), had only hinted at -- thanks in part to guitarist Brendan Lynch's doubling on keyboards and programming whiz Master Cylinder's electronic touches spiking Matthew Ellard's groove-happy mix.

The evening was a well-earned though somewhat bittersweet celebration of these triumphs, for it also marked a poignant farewell to Cherry 2000, who according to an e-mail announcement from the band earlier in the weekend were playing their last show together -- a gloomy note that didn't go unacknowledged by the headliners, who called them "probably the best live band in town." Then, with hugs and mutual words of support exchanged, SGD got down to the business at hand, opening their dozen-song set with the fine new "Knock Down" (it was marred by singer Ginny Weaver's faulty mike, which rendered her all but inaudible). "Exploding Party Favor" was all churning rhythm and swirling atmosphere; the sunny melodic disposition of "Erase Me" belied the tale's true message of a crumbling relationship.

SGD closed with the heavy-lidded haze of "Holiday" -- a near-perfect pop song freighted with melancholic grace and laced with Lynch's meticulously wrought guitar squalls -- but it was much earlier, on "Underdrive," that the band shed the poor sound and their shy, tentative disposition for good. With Lynch's opening keyboard figure scripting curlicues above everybody's heads, the rhythm section of bassist Owen Burkett and drummer Chris Foley punched the gas and the tune suddenly accelerated out of the gate, Weaver's voice a smooth, purring confirmation over the humming engine of the band: "My stereo's on, my stereo's on." There was no doubt about it. The electricity was working.

-- Jonathan Perry