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I'm a fan of several Ryan Lee projects, but have not yet seen him with The Mindless. It is, for the most part, a little more mellow and down-tempo than most of his stuff. These are pop songs, but they retain the skewed sensibility of his other work and, of course, there's Ryan's weird, powerful voice. The band is a three-piece, and perhaps the most striking thing about their set is the constantly changing instruments. They start out with Ryan on bass and Dan on acoustic guitar, then Ryan switches to electric and Dan to bass, then Dan switches between acoustic guitar and bass within a couple of songs, while Ryan switches off between his guitars. It makes for some drag between songs, but it also makes for a varied sound. There are some very good dynamic contrasts within songs, too, with thick distortion and soaring vocals giving way to quiet acoustic passages.
Up next are masters of just this sort of balanced, eclectic presentation. Faces on Film start off with a sort of dance-punk sound, screaming over a fast, simple four-beat. By the end of the song, the rhythms have branched out to include four-against-three and alternating-sevens-and-eights sections. The next song is a pretty tune with soulful vocals and delicate finger-picking on guitar, and the third one (my favorite from their excellent new EP) combines all these impulses. It's an impressive performance, made even more so by the fact that this is not their regular drummer (who is recuperating from a broken wrist), but The Bon Savants' drummer filling in on two rehearsals! These are not simple songs, and he's damn near flawless. Nor does he hold anything back for his upcoming set with his own band. After the set is over, four different people independently approach me to say, "Wow! Those guys were amazing!"
After all that wide-ranging awesomeness, I'm a little bit disappointed with The Twenty Twos. They're solid and entertaining, but fairly simple, sweetly snarling pop-punk. Lots of fast fours, and not much else for the first several songs. They do it well, with some catchy tunes and simple, appealing harmony backing vocals, and it's sort of mindless fun. But then when I'm starting to get bored with it, they change things up a little. The keyboard player takes the vocal lead for a song, and it's a somewhat slower tune with a more interesting keyboard part and an engaging melody that makes me think of '90s female-fronted radio bands like Elastica and Garbage. Just having that break in the otherwise almost constant tempo helps keep things interesting, and if it were up to me, I'd shift them slightly toward this mode, for balance. Also, while I'm picking nits, the lead singer has sort of a snotty, whiney catch to her voice which is very effective the first several times she uses it, but which I hear too much of before the set is over. Aside from that, she's very good.
It has been months since The Bon Savants last played, which I would be more annoyed by if it weren't because they've been working on the album that we're all eager to have finished. But the result is that we, their loving fans, are in a frenzy of anticipation when they finally take the stage. They start their set with the familiar one-two punch of "One Night Stand," quiet and mellow and melancholy, segueing into the sprawling grandeur of "Why This Would Never Work Between Us." "One Night Stand" either has a great new harmony vocal or has the best mix tonight I've ever heard it with. "WTWNWBU" has the weird falsetto part that I've been extremely dubious about in the past and which they have made work by the simple expedient of Thom, their lead singer, becoming unquestionably great at it. He is quite possibly the best singer in Boston, and tonight he is on fire. The whole band seems uncharacteristically relaxed and happy onstage, which I enjoy. And Andy, their drummer, does not seem any the worse for wear in his second set of the evening. He is absolutely perfect tonight, powerful and varied and fluid, and I think he's part of what's really woken this band's sound up for me. They've always had good tunes and good singing, but they could be a little low-energy and washy before; with more active drumming and more incisive guitar sounds, they've become the complete package. They play to a packed house right up to last call, and finish with their fired up Joy Division cover, in which Thom gets all rock star on us and invades the audience.
