Hello 2024, your new favorite band has come to town. They’re called Brigitte Calls Me Baby, the modern indie quintet out of Chicago that crashes The Red Room @ Cafe 939 tonight (February 14), riding a seductive wave of romantic nostalgia and providing an apt soundtrack for the lovers and would-be lovers strewn across a frigid Back Bay of Boston.
Crooning frontman Wes Leavins is a human magnet, drawing the yearning DNA of Morrissey and Roy Orbison and duly raised on the likes of The Cars and The Strokes, as the band parlay a stirring cocktail of the darker pop classics that made us dance back when we wore a younger person’s clothes, free from the confines of aging and the antagonistic society around us.
Last fall, the band released cinematic debut EP This House Is Made Of Corners, and the hype train had already left the station. Now it arrives on Boylston Street, part of a larger East Coast tour staring down the threat of winter, ready to settle any lingering debts and calm any cold-hearted worries.
“In so much music there’s a desire to be perceived as someone who’s got it all figured out, but I never want to paint a picture that isn’t true,” says Leavins. “I know that when I was younger I was looking for something to latch onto that I could connect with and feel a part of, so I’d hope that our music could provide that for others. I want to create something that helps people feel more alive, and that will last long after we’re gone.”
Brigitte Calls Me Baby are on that track. It’s a cold Valentine’s Day in Boston, and the bucket of love has run dry. This a band arriving to deliver some needed warmth. Go ahead and indulge, and fill yourself with the notion of saying “Yeah, I was there…” oh, so many years from now.
BRIGITTE CALLS ME BABY + MICKY JAMES :: Wednesday, February 14 at The Red Room at Cafe 939, 939 Boylston St. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., $18 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
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