fbpx

Daylight Saving: 11 acts to catch at Boston Calling ’18 before the sun sets

s52Power.001

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.


A day before Boston Calling Music Festival released its full lineup, the headliners were apparently accidentally leaked online by one of the FM radio stations in town. It gave an early glimpse into the top-billing anchors of this spring's festival, going down May 25 to 27 at the Harvard Athletic Complex in Allston, and fired up the usual debates over quality and relevancy.

But it turns out the real juice for Boston Calling '18 was hidden underneath the big-font bigwigs (Eminem, The Killers, and Jack White, with notables like Queens of the Stone Age, Paramore, The National, Khalid and Tyler, The Creator on Line 2). This year's Boston Calling has maybe its strongest undercard ever, meaning a lot of the anticipated highlights will be going down while the sun is still up.

Sure, we can't wait to hear The Killers play songs off Hot Fuss, Eminem's first show in Boston in 13 years should be all sorts of "Fuck Trump" fun, and Jack White is gonna Jack White the shit out of all of us whether we like it or not. But those daytime hours are where the magic truly is, and we've picked 11 bands and artists, out of the overall 45, that we are most excited about on first poster glance. We might come up with another 11 next week.

Prev10 of 11Next
Swipe or use your ← → (arrow) keys

Weakened Friends

We’re only getting three New England bands at this spring’s Boston Calling — down from six last year — but the quality of this troika is undebatable. While we always hope the locals representing on these bills play later in the day to bigger audiences, chances are they’ll be tasked with opening the day’s slate of performances. For Weakened Friends, that won’t be a problem, as the Portland, Maine, trio’s rocket-charged fuzz-pop should have the kids running from the gates to the stage just after noon. The 2016 Rumble finalists continue to blitz stages around the region, rolled hard in September with their collaboration with Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis, and last month won Unsigned Artist of the Year at the Boston Music Awards. Fun fact: This will be singer-guitarist Sonia Sturino’s second time playing Boston Calling, as her prior band The Box Tiger won a SonicBids competition to play the May 2014 installment of the festival.

Prev10 of 11Next
Swipe or use your ← → (arrow) keys