There’s a bit of an online debate lately, brought up over the weekend up by a local band snubbed by the Boston Music Awards, about whether a group can be visible and thrive in 2016 without a heavy social media presence. We won’t pretend to know the answer to that, but we do know that one of our favorite new bands is one that has decided to not only not make a Facebook page, but skip the arduous process of press photos as well. That band is Strange Passage, a young Somerville quartet that strikes all the right C86, jangle-pop, and Sarah Records notes while still bringing something new and fresh to a rather timeless sound.
And they sound like the perfect soundtrack for autumn and the sudden temperature drop.
Strange Passage’s debut EP, titled Shine and Scatter, is an impressive four-song collection of moody, tilted guitar-pop, and you can listen to it below via Bandcamp in advance of the band’s debut live show this Friday at the Democracy Center in Cambridge. They describe their sound as “post-punk-infused jangle pop with strong nods to Felt, the Church, and the Feelies,” and we’re pretty sure they’re already tired of that type of name-droppiness.
Undeterred, we reached out to singer/guitarist Renato Montenegro for more on the band, who are letting their songs do most of the talking.
“We formed earlier this year after dissolving Bummed (Accidental Guest Recordings), a shoegaze band of which everyone in the Strange Passage was once a member,” Montenegro tells Vanyaland. “Strange Passage does share members with a number of other currently active bands too, all of which sound nothing like Strange Passage: Brown, Demonbrother (Iron Lung Records), Absolute Power (Youth Attack Records), Dust Witch, Missionary Work (Death Wound Zine). We do currently have some new material in the pipeline and plan on recording again soon.”
For their debut live show this Friday, they’ll share the stage with Crystalline Roses’s Anthony Pasquarosa, New York pop group Pigeons, and Western Mass’ Dirt Devil.
Expect good things ahead.
