Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Boston’s 10 best
From Apollo’s sunshine to tunnels of Love
COMPILED BY MATT ASHARE

It was such a great year for local rock that we employed close to a dozen writers to keep their fingers on the proverbial pulse. From Mash Ave DJ nights to a bunch of new bands joining Dropkick Murphys on the Warped Tour, it was hard to find an area where Boston wasn’t making waves. And aren’t those guys in Clap Your Hands Say Yeah from Boston? We’re almost sure we saw one of them fronting the Guns N’ Roses cover band Mr. Brownstone . . . But we had more than enough to choose from without them, especially now that Mobius Band, whose The Loving Sounds of Static (Ghostly) would have been a shoo-in, have relocated to Brooklyn. So here they are, in alphabetical order: 10 of the best CDs that came out of the local scene in 2005.

1 Apollo Sunshine | Heavy Rotation/spinART

Back before their September 9 CD-release show downstairs at the Middle East, Jonathan Perry spoke to Apollo Sunshine at their rural retreat in Leverett about songwriting, adding a new guitarist, playing with two drummers, and the involvement of the Berklee-student-run Heavy Rotation label in Apollo Sunshine. He described the disc’s mutating soundscapes, where sinewy jazz-rock instrumentals nuzzle up to Apples in Stereo candy-coated party favors and pastoral country pop and the faux roadhouse shitkicker "Magnolia," a sour-mash-stomp indie update of "Sweet Virginia," saunters into the fuzz-and-scuzz jam-heavy wipeout of "Phyliss."

Apollo Sunshine, "Today Is the Day"
Apollo Sunshine, "Magnolia"

2 Certainly, Sir | TAN | Rallye

There’s something wrong when a band whom the Promise Ring invited along on their farewell tour and international DJ phenom Howie B counts among his faves can’t get a domestic record deal. Maybe it’s just an indication of how far ahead of the neo-new-wave curve programmer Nick "Klaus" Hubben, former Wicked Farleys singer-guitarist Michael Brodeur, and former Vehicle Birth drummer Jeff Galusha are with their Postal Serviced techno-pop grooves and electro-organic hooks.

Certainly, Sir, "Midnight Again"

3 The Click Five | Greetings From Imrie House | Lava/Atlantic

As Scott Frampton pointed out when the band were in NYC opening for the Backstreet Boys and conquering MTV’s TRL Live: "The Click Five’s sound, though well-scrubbed, has audible links to the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Cars. They recall a time when groups with names like the Raspberries and the Sweet poured from transistor radios. They could even pass for a Posies knockoff carved out of Ivory soap. Imagine a modern-day Monkees leading a power-pop restoration." In other words, close your eyes and ignore the smiling suit-and-tied boys on stage and the screaming teens in the crowd and what you actually heard were some of the best Fountains of Wayne hooks since Welcome Interstate Managers.

The Click Five, "My Girlfriend (Forgot me this Christams)"

4 Compound 440R: Local Collections 2005 | UV

It was September when Camille Dodero stopped by the Somerville warehouse/practice space known as Compound 440, and it immediately struck her as "an artistic incubator for everything from U.V. Protection, an all-female operatic synth-pop trio of faux robots who compose make-out music for high-school science teachers, to Big Digits, a pair of white-boy rappers in white pants who lead house-party choruses about pink chocolate and dance casinos, to Squids, a grrrlish post-punk threesome who’re just as happy playing for high-school students at an outdoor shed in Palmer as they are headlining a rock club." Add other local greats like Night Rally, Cassette, the Mittens, and Ho-Ag to the list and you’ve got the best comp of local bands we’ve heard in years.

Big Digits, "Access to Mesh"
Night Ralley, "Never, November, Ember"
UV Protection, "UV Protection Theme"
Squids, "Shoots"
Ho-Ag, "Golden All Night"

5 Frank Smith | Think Farms | Lonesome Recordings

Let’s not bother going through the extended family tree of band members that eventually led to Frank Smith except to say they’re a band, not a guy, and the brainchild of Lot Six drummer Aaron Sinclair. All similarities end there, as Will Spitz discovered when he spoke to Sinclair in July. Sinclair had been listening to a lot of country-influenced music, especially Wilco, and he said he was "trying to find my way around the lighter side of things after being in a lot of punk bands." Mission accomplished.

Frank Smith, "Heads Up"

6 Juliana Hatfield | Made In China | Ye Olde Records

The past few years have seen Jules hit what you might call her second stride as a respected artist, thanks to a successful Blake Babies reunion, several fine indie albums, an all-grrrl side-project called Some Girls, and now one of her best discs in years, one she released on her own label. Jon Garelick traveled to Martha’s Vineyard in August to discover that "Hatfield’s melodies, and that voice — girlish, pure, defiant — save her from bathos. She’s ‘lived to tell,’ as the saying goes. Her sarcastic/ironic sense of humor doesn’t hurt either."

Juliana Hatfield on Myspace

7 Lost City Angels | Broken World | Stay Gold

Ted Drozdowski visited the LCA boys in Camp Street Studios last year, when Broken World was first coming together, and noticed they’d moved on from being a straight-ahead punk band. Good thing he did, because the band spent most of 2005 on the road and he had to catch up with them on the phone in April in El Paso to check in on the results. "We’ve always had a broad spectrum of musical tastes and styles that we draw on," drummer Adam Shaw told him, "but we wanted everybody to pick up on the songs and where we’re coming from, because the topics we write about are important to us. They’re a form of therapy for the band members. Seeing everybody get so deep into the songs when we play makes us feel like maybe we’re doing something right."

Lost City Angels, "Pretty War"

8 The Rudds | Get the Femuline Hang On | self-released

Sporting an all-star local line-up of former Papas Fritas frontman Tony Goddess on bass, guitarist Brett Rosenberg (whose own Problem released a Top 10 contender in Speed Metal from Montreal), and drummer Nathan Logus, the Rudds, as Brett Milano suggested back in July, are all about frontman John Powhida (J-Po to his friends). As Goddess said, "We do have a John Powhida Appreciation Society here. To me the Rudds are a band that can rock as hard as Cheap Trick, but there aren’t a lot of rock guys who can do the R&B ballads like he can."

The Rudds, "Astrological Sign Choker"

9 The Stairs | On Sleep Lab | ATV

It wasn’t until the evening of their farewell gig that we managed to hook up with the Stairs, proud sons of Dedham with a keen ear for Elephant 6–style hooks and a talent for quirky yet tuneful home recording — think Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control. Fortunately, Hallelujah the Hills have already sprung from the ashes of the Stairs. And as guitarist/songwriter Evan Sicuranza joked, "We’ve got so many songs that we can be the Charles Bukowski of rock and roll — we’ll still be putting out new albums for years after we’re gone."

The Stairs, "Escape Clause"

10 Tunnel of Love | ECA

It’s our bad that it took four albums before we noticed the unholy psychobilly racket of Tunnel of Love — not to mention those black-and-white-striped tights the trio sport. On the other hand, it’s only in the past year that they’ve moved from art spaces to clubland and have become a guitar/drums/vocals trio, so it’s now easier for them to break down the old wall between band and audience. As Ted Drozdowski described their sound back in June, "The energy level, sonic distortion, and foam-lipped singing tumble out of the speakers like the second coming of the Tasmanian Devil, albeit one who plays drums and guitars and wears tights while he raves."

Tunnel of Love, "Paint It Black"

 


Issue Date: December 23 - 29, 2005
Back to the Music table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group