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Fire Theft on Lansdowne Street
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Sixteen bands, four clubs, one street: sounds like the makings of pretty good affair. And that’s how this year’s FNX/Phoenix Best Music Poll party turned out, despite a brief yet threatening 10-minute downpour that doused Lansdowne Street a week ago Thursday. There wasn’t enough rain to douse an emotionally charged performance by local alterna-rock goddess Juliana Hatfield, who kept the thousands who’d gathered on the street from running for cover with familiar favorites from her major-label days like "My Sister" even as she focused on newer material from her last few albums, which like her latest, In Exile Deo, have come out on the local Rounder Zoë imprint. There was in fact a progression of sorts at work on the Lansdowne Street main stage as one of Boston’s best new indie bands, the loud, chaotic, Who-like Runner and the Thermodynamics, passed the baton to Hatfield, who then gave the stage over to the irony-laced ’90s hitmaking Presidents of the United States of America for a set that kicked off with the MC5’s "Kick Out the Jams" before the outdoor segment of the evening concluded with an inspired set by the veteran Violent Femmes. Yeah, the Femmes were around making alternative rock before they even had a name for it. And you’d think that teen angst coming from a guy — Gordon Gano — who was putting out records back when they were still called "records" might seem a little stale. But Femmes classics like "Blister in the Sun" have aged well, and none of the kids on the street appeared concerned that the guy torturing himself over the terror of teenage sex up there on stage was old enough to be their father. From the Keith Moony drum detonations of Runner and the Thermodynamics to the expected explosion of expletives that came during the Femmes’ beloved "Kiss Off," the outdoor stage offered a instructive and impressive historic cross-section of what we’ve come to know and love as alternative rock. Once the party moved into the various clubs on Lansdowne — Avalon, Axis, Bill’s Bar, and Jake Ivory’s — it was more a matter of picking your poison. Which is not to suggest there was anything toxic about the 13 bands who finished the night out indoors, just that there was no way to catch every act without bending the spacetime continuum. The flavor of the month — or, perhaps, year — seems to be what you might call a new wave of new wave. No, not the hairsprayed, synth-washed variety of new wave that England did such a good job of exporting to American MTV in the ’80s but a more complex, Cure-like, guitar-driven variety that mostly thrived below the radar while the pretty faces of Duran Duran and Kajagoogoo were in heavy rotation. The Rapture, Elephant, Stellastarr, Laguardia, and the Rapture were on hand to represent the various aspects of this latest underground trend, which appears to be surfacing to some genuine acclaim. Meanwhile, locals like the Lot Six, the Unseen, and the Explosion were on hand to represent the essence of punk rock. And they got some support from Detroit-bred garage-rock savants the Von Bondies. But one of the best-kept secrets of the evening was the appearance of three-quarters of the now defunct proto-emo band Sunny Day Real Estate — a foursome from Seattle who emerged in the mid ’90s as a hopeful alternative to the angst-ridden grunge-by-numbers of the first Stone Temple Pilots album — at Bill’s Bar in the guise of the Fire Theft. Fronted by the enigmatic, emotive Jeremy Enigk and backed by a rhythm section so good that Dave Grohl stole drummer William Goldsmith and bassist Nate Mendel away for his first touring version of the Foo Fighters, the Fire Theft offered wave after churning wave of enthralling prog-punk tension and release. And to judge by the line that formed in front of Bill’s Bar before their set, the band aren’t destined to be a secret for much longer.
BY MATT ASHARE
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