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PA's Lounge has removed the tables from the band room since I was last here, making the room a more nearly perfect rectangle and thus even more echoey and muddy-sounding, but the owner assures me that he is aware of the issue and plans to hang something soft on the walls, eventually. Tonight is a weird night of mostly first gigs, which can be rough. First up are Fragile, and they start by starting up a pre-recorded backing track with canned drums and a synth line. I hate backing tracks, and I hate canned drums, so they're really not for me. The vocals, although mixed too low, hint at some pleasant melody, and the guitar is okay, in sort of a watery New Wave sort of way. On the second song, the backing track goes dramatically wrong and needs to be killed, and I get to feel all smug and think, "See? This is why I hate backing tracks." when really it's just blind, unreasoning loathing. They eventually give up on it and soldier on without it, and I like that better, but the drummer's not really steady enough to keep the beat on his own. Fortunately, they only play three songs.
Up next is Animal Hospital, who is one person with a bunch of equipment. He is not playing his first gig ever, and it shows. His modus operandi involves guitar, drums, and a whole lot of looping. He sings over it, too, but the vocals are very soft and seem extraneous to the shimmery, meditative guitar loops. These are layered deeply, and slowly faded in and out for an effect that verges on ambient, yet somehow fails to get boring. Luke from Night Rally (and Boo Radley, tonight) helps out with additional drums on one of his two songs.
Boo Radley is Luke's studio side project, with Matt from Clickers helping him to make some sort of show out of it. This is their first gig. It takes forever to set up, with drums, keyboards, guitar, some kind of weird drum-synth sample thingy, and a computer to play, yes, backing tracks. The idea is that Boo Radley material will be half sung rock songs and half rapped hip-hop tracks. I like Luke and Matt, and I absolutely love their other bands, so I really want to like this, but it's just not happening. The backing tracks are synthy and rhythmically simple and they drive me nuts. The rap seems to have some interesting bits, but I can't make out almost any words, and that's not good for rap. The rock songs have guitar, which helps, but Luke's rich, theatrical baritone, so well-used in Night Rally, is not as well suited to being the sole vocalist. They, too, play only three songs, due to time constraints. (I've been here two and a half hours at this point and I've heard eight songs, but I understand that it's a night to try new things and work out the bugs.)
The Debutantes are ALSO playing their first gig ever. (Their name will never again be as appropriate as it is right now.) They are a more standard pop-rock three-piece who, mercifully, play all their parts live. And, in fact, they seem practiced and polished and ready to go in all but one respect. The instruments are all good, with interesting bass lines, beautiful guitar parts, and dynamite drumming. The problem is the singing. He's got a really weak voice, soft and breathy with wobbly pitch. This is doubly frustrating because, first, one of the best singers in Boston is the bass player and doesn't even sing backup, and second, the songs themselves are really good. Bright, catchy melodies that set off the lovely guitar playing to perfection, so I really want to be able to hear them better.
