That Was The Show That Was: The Beatings | TT The Bear's

With not a small amount of oddly felt civic pride, we finally saw -- after 18 months of digging the band -- Boston indie rockers The Beatings ply their craft at TT The Bear's Thursday night. The quartet roared through a 10-song set that for us fondly recalled seeing the mighty Superchunk touring On The Mouth in 1993. We're sure that The Beatings long ago tired of Superchunk comparisons, as the groups invite overly simplistic comparison because they share the sort-of classic '90s indie composition of twin guitarists and a woman on bass.

We don't use the 'Chunk comparison to dumb down what we saw Thursday, however, but rather as a shorthand to convey the pogoing intensity, slashing feedback and joy of performing we saw. We suppose if the band wasn't a quartet we could make similar comparisons to Husker Du or the recently re-awesome-ified Mission Of Burma. The larger point to be made is The Beatings trade in rough-hewn and powerfully delivered rock tunes. The odd sense of civic pride? We don't know... The Beatings were so good, we felt glad that they are from Boston. We suppose we should have actually been feeling stupid, since it took us so long to turn on to the band, considering they've been releasing records for almost as long we we've lived in The Hub. But we digress...

The foursome blasted through a career-spanning set (set list below, transcribed from a not-quite-legible sheet guitarist Tony Skalicky worked from, so we're not certain of all the titles). One highlight among many was a new, dare-we-say poppier number that the band had only practiced twice called "Cam New" (as in, Cameron's new song). It's upbeat, has a melodic bass line and is fairly straightforward, and we're hopeful that it will appear on the next Beatings record. Another brighter bright spot was the concise scorcher "CoIntelPro," from 2006's excellent long player Holding On To Hand Grenades. That record, incidentally, was humorously plugged by bassist Erin Dalbec in a lull during the set, who then teased herself for sounding like Kasey Kasem. We're linking to a pair of songs below that The Beatings played Thursday. And here is a Flickr set of photos we shot during the show. Keep your eyes out for a new full-length from the band by the end of the year, as well as a new EP from Beatings guitarist ER's side project of the same name we first mentioned here last month.

The Beatings -- "CoIntelPro" -- Live On WBCN Boston
The Beatings -- "Twins" -- Italiano
[right click and save as]
[buy Beatings recordings from Midriff Records here]

Summer (?)
Scorched Earth Policy
Twins
Shark Attacks Are On The Rise
Instrumental
Cam New
Burn Down The Jungle
Nothing
CoIntelPro
A Responsible Person

The Beatings: InterWeb | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr