Editor’s Note: In May 2013, Boston underwent a music revolution. Award-winning digital arts magazine Vanyaland and game-changing major-league music festival Boston Calling launched within 10 short days of each other, completely altering and elevating the landscape where music and culture intersect in a city that had previously gone relatively stale. In the near-decade since, the two entities have been a defining feature of our city, both for its residents and how it’s perceived everywhere else. In Spring 2022, Vanyaland and Boston Calling team up to showcase the homegrown bands and artists that help shape the most Boston lineup of Boston Calling ever. Boston Calling’s ’22 headliners — Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, The Strokes — and its solid undercard are well-known and established; but over the next few weeks, keep it locked as Vanyaland profiles the homegrown talent that decorates the lineup like never before. Nine years later, Vanyaland and Boston Calling continue to showcase Boston in new ways, and we have the sounds to prove it.
Frances Forever
Performing Saturday, May 28
Artist bio:
Frances Forever can spin anything into sunshine. As the project of Boston-area singer-songwriter Frances Garrett, its myriad moods can send listeners reeling into romance or off floating in existential space. Garrett balances their familiarity with extremes with an undeniable ear for melody and a gift for writing tracks that could live at home anywhere on the pop timeline. paranoia party, the project’s first EP in the wake of TikTok explosion “space girl,” rockets forward with the past half-century of radio magic in its back pocket. Atop this glitter-shocked display, Garrett spills their guts about fumbling their own power.
“space girl,” Frances Forever’s smash single, targeted TikTok and is still blasting off. The bouncy indie-pop track, which also saw a reissue with fellow rising star Chloe Moriondo, has racked up nearly forty million plays worldwide and landed Garrett on a handful of Artist to Watch lists. paranoia party further seals their fate as a breakout act, showing off Frances Forever’s mastery of vintage texture and 2021 attention spans in equal measure. From the doo-wop glaze of opener “depression” to the horn-flecked indietronica of “daylight,” paranoia party carves its identity from stopovers in darker, braver territory. Those enchanted by “space girl” have plenty to root for, though, as the EP’s title track serves as its boldest mission statement, stacking a story of college-party anxiety against a circus-tent waltz that glitches and stutters in line with Garrett’s narrative confidence.
After “space girl,” Frances Forever set their sets on a world far larger than the one they began to conquer. On paranoia party, their claim is staked more definitively than ever, and you’re invited to the celebration.
“Paranoia Party,” the title track to Frances Forever’s forthcoming EP, revamps frontperson Frances Garrett’s experiences at an unfamiliar college party into a darkly charming affair that gets weirder as they move through the rooms of their memory. There’s a bit of waltzy charm to the song that gets jilted and jagged in a space full of living, loving, and Bud Light-soaked couches. Even with its circus-tent setup and cinematic pacing, “Paranoia Party” is the unlikeliest party jam of this summer.