“Miley” by SWMRS is a problematic song.
I say this because it wasn’t so long ago that to an audience predisposed to a band like SWMRS, mainstream pop music was the enemy. The Man deployed the artless, vapid Jamin’ Top 40 to subjugate and fleece the clueless, conformist masses, whereas indie music had authenticity and creative merit, so we thought.
A bit later, for reasons I can’t specify but am pretty sure had something to do with 9/11, it became fashionably ironic to purport fondness for a cosmically commercial song or two, every now and again. Gradually, tongue-in-cheek “guilty” pleasure bled over into the genuine, regular kind of pleasure. Smart people wrote think pieces about the genius of Taylor Swift, and now, rambunctious 12- to 15-year-olds can pogo and shout “Miley is a punk rock queen!” — as several did at a sold-out Middle East Upstairs on Sunday afternoon — and really believe it.
Don’t get me wrong, in many respects, Miley is a punk rock queen. SWMRS aren’t the first to notice. But she’s not supposed to get credit for it until maybe two or three years after she drops out of the limelight to live anonymously, and occasionally re-emerge to quietly promote confounding experimental noise/spoken-word albums. No matter how much she parties with Against Me! and Joan Jett, less than a year after hosting the MTV Awards is too soon to be officially punk. Even though he fights crime, Batman only has one cop buddy, because nobody — not Batman, not even Miley — can rail against the establishment and epitomize it at the same time.
And so, of course Oakland’s SWMRS — formerly known as Emily’s Army — can’t do that either. It’s darn tricky to cultivate street cred when you’re better looking than the average reality show contestant and your drummer’s dad is Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day. But the mostly towheaded quartet hardly appear focused on siphoning nihilistic grit off an act like, for instance, FIDLAR, whose singer Zac Carper produced SWMRS’ latest, Drive North. On Sunday, they primarily sought to turn the Mid East Up into a not-quite-uncomfortably cramped, indoor version of Warped Tour’s Kevin Says stage, and did a fine and dandy job of that. Among the 20-or-so audience members who spent the performance doing that not-quite-moshing-because-not-enough-space-in-front-of-the-stage squash dance I’m not sure if there’s a word for, as many as six knew what to do when the band requested a Wall of Death. Those those young men and women were the true champions of the afternoon.
SWMRS, in light of their surroundings, noted “Miss Yer Kiss” was penned with a onetime Boston University student in mind. “Miss Yer Kiss” is not a very good song. I dunno if “Miley” is all that terrific, either. Fortunately, SWMRS had much better songs available — “Brb,” for instance — to balance out the crummy ones.
And luckily for BU, tourmates The Frights redeemed the gloriously overpriced institution minutes earlier with an entire set of indirectly BU-related tunage. Drummer Marc Finn attended classes on Commonwealth Avenue at some point before his relocation to San Diego, and anonymous sources inform Vanyaland that all three Frights are rad dudes. Bassist Richard Dotson flailed about quite like Stephen Pope used to before George W. Bush executed Jay Reatard on bogus treason charges, while singer Mikey Carnevale crooned like Nick 13. Carnevale can’t help it that he looks a wee bit like Ted Cruz, but after the senator is also executed on vindictive and equally fraudulent treason charges by President Donald Trump, Carnevale will still play in a super speedy rockabilly-punk band, so his Cruz problem will work itself out.
From a distance, Gymshorts’ guitarist (whose name, from what I can surmise, is Andy) looks like Garth Algar from Wayne’s World. The resemblance doesn’t hold up upon a passing closer inspection, but the association feels apt for their bludgeoning stew of self-described stoner punk, which proceeded Frights. Boston’s Burglary Years played first, and their effortlessly suave, melancholy indie would certainly get them booked to play a party Audrey Horne’s house, if Audrey Horne’s house existed.
Follow Barry Thompson on Twitter @BarelyTomson.