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Aloud are an excellent start for a big night of strong, melodic pop/rock bands. They have a Stones-y rock sound anchored by memorable tunes and HUGE vocals. Two fantastic singers share lead vocal duties, each can do quiet and soulful or wild and raucous, and when they harmonize, it's a little bit of heaven in Cambridge. They also share lead guitar duties, and they have different strengths that set each other off well. And the drummer continues to get better each time I see them; last time he had gotten to flawless, and this time he keeps that high standard while starting to really branch out, adding fills that are tricky and interesting and perfectly executed. Tonight's set starts with a lot of new material, teasing the full-length album that's apparently well along, and the standout for me is "Beaches," a powerful, hooky song that covers their entire dynamic range and includes some really standout wailing from Jen. Then they finish the set with some older songs that I was hoping to hear, and on which they can really relax and cut loose.
The Appreciation Post are playing their first show ever. (But they have four-song demos to give out, which is fairly impressive organization.) They are a five-piece that play sweet, sunny pop songs, which their singer delivers with an infectious grin. Early in their set, his pitch is pretty wobbly, but whether he gets warmed up or the monitor situation gets better, by mid-set that problem is fixed, and he has a really good singing voice, warm and smooth. They use an incongruously distorted hard-rock guitar sound and really synthetic new-wave keyboards, which somehow manage to balance each other out and fit the songs. (Neither would work without the other.) They cover a Billy Joel song, which I can't really get behind, and it's telling, really; if you like pop that's pretty and polished, and maybe a little lightweight (Tom uses the word "twee"), you'll probably like this band. It's certainly a damn impressive first show.
The Luxury are only playing their third show (although it's the first time I've seen them), but they have the advantage of a tremendously strong base on which to build: they include members of The Halogens and Baby Strange, and they play some of the best of The Halogens catalogue along with new songs. This means sprawling, stirring Brit-pop epics—I keep using the word "majestic" when describing these songs, but that's because it's the right word—and Jason Dunn's excellent lead vocals. The Luxury builds on this base with uniformly great playing, good harmony vocals, and really stellar lead guitar, flashy and rocking where rock and flash are appropriate, but always within the context of these beautiful songs.
Headlining are Mando Diao, who are a bass-driven five-piece Swedish garage band. (The sixth person on stage is there to swap their guitars and stand the mic stands back up when they continually knock them over; they're a very high-maintenance garage band.) One of their two lead singers is very good, with a clear and lively voice, and the other is weird and yelpy, not bad but more interesting than good. There's a Farfisa, but the bass sort of swamps everything else; they've brought their own sound guy, and that's a shame, because the room guy has been doing a great job all night, and now the bass is out of control. The songs are very simple and short. We stick around for about half a dozen of them, but they're all very much cut from the same cloth, the drummer's a bit woozy, and we're already well-satisfied by the musical evening we've had, so we head home.
