Studio 52 is a community artist space located in the heart of Allston, and is proud to support the Boston music scene and local artist community.
If Boston wants to keep wintering this week at a frigid and miserable pace, then we might as well align ourselves with chilly sounds that somehow manage to keep us warm on the inside. And there seems to be no better place to drown in lush sound than Saturday night (March 4) at the Lilypad in Cambridge, where Illegally Blind Presents has curated probably the best post-punk-leaning lineups we'll see all year.
The show features celebrated Welsh band Chain Of Flowers (likely named after The Cure song and armed with a self-titled 2015 LP that ticks all the right shadow-'gazing boxes) as well as New Zealand downer-pop misfit Kane Strang. Rounding things out are two of New England's finest purveyors of the darker side of guitar-pop in Providence fidget machine Way Out and Somerville's jangly lads Strange Passage. We've hyped the two latter bands on these pages before: Peep Way Out's mood and gloom track "Arrival" from October 2015, and get familiar with Strange Passage's own brand of C86-inspired harmonies via their excellent fall EP Shine and Scatter.
You can hear all the performing bands below, but on a cold day like today we've really zeroed in on Chain Of Flowers, who remind us a bit of classic alternative bands like Chameleons and Echo & The Bunnymen (with a bit more urgency) as well as modern acts like Weekend and Eagulls. “When a lot of bands start up, they don’t aim that highly with the songs they’re writing,” Chain of Flowers vocalist Joshua Smith tells Upset Magazine a while back. "We thought fuck it. People can laugh because we’ve gone so whole hog, but it sounds good. We’ve done what we want to do with it. Don’t restrict yourselves, the fucking sky’s the limit.”
It sounds very good.
Preview all the bands below via Bandcamp, and we feel the need to particularly highlight Chain Of Flowers blitzing 2015 single "Death's Got A Hold On Me" as well. Show info via the link up top or the flyer after all the jumps.
