And Then This Happened: The Beatings Perform Italiano! | 10th Anniversary Show | Radio, Somerville | 23 March

Fucking legendary.

Guillermo Sexo Record Release Show With Soccermom, Young Adults | Precinct, Somerville | 16 July

So we know earlier in the summer, we were all like "the Ringo Deathstarr/Young Adults show is the show of the summer," or some such. Which may turn out being true. But what if it becomes a close call? What if the Guillermo Sexo record release show next weekend turns out to be seriously off the chizz-nain? After all, the new Guillermo Sexo record Secret Wild is wonderful [review forthcoming]. And also Clicky Clicky faves Soccermom AND Young Adults are also on the bill. And both of those acts are seriously at the top of their game right now. Young Adults played "Wasting Time" during their headline slot for the Deathstarr gig [review here] and the entire crowd hollered along, the room started to get that heat ripple look that you see when you stare across asphalt parking lots on a boiling-hot summer day. It was amazing. And Soccermom's headline set for the Get Help record release show at the end of May was a jaw-dropper [review]. What we're saying is all the ingredients are in place. Next Saturday is going to be bonkers. This isn't just about you buying us beers. This is bigger. This is about awesome indie rock in Boston. Be there.

Young Adults - Wasting Time by Tympanogram

And Then This Happened: The Beatings | RSL Summer Par-Tay | 3 June

The Beatings, live at Foundry 24, Charlestown, Massachusetts.

That Was The Show That Was: Get Help with E.R. and Soccermom

Thursday night at PA's in Somerville, Mass., three of Boston's best -- we're fudging New York/New Jersey-based Get Help's geographical bona fides here on purpose because of history, man -- brought their A game for an evening packed cheek to jowl with rock that howled. Beatings co-fronter Eldridge Rodriguez stuck the landing on a gripping and occasionally curious set that drew heavily from his superlative 2011 solo long-player You Are Released. The collection grafts onto Rodriquez's characteristically intense guitar shouters electronic beats and samples, and it was interesting to see drummer Dennis Grabowski, who also detonates the cans for The Beatings, play to electronics triggered live by a guy that we assume was Ray Jeffery, co-producer and recording engineer for You Are Released (among other E.R. recordings) brother Dave Grabowski (formerly of Scuba, now of Midriff Records' own Louder My Dear, which features Dennis Grabowski on guitar). Those electronics also writhed in the breaks between songs like a dimly lit pit of snakes, limning the already dark tunes with an ethereal, unsettling dimension. The set was highlighted by Mr. Rodriguez, resplendent in a white suit, delivering a scalding iteration of "Run MF Run;" the live rendition was augmented with a new bell sample and the explosive choruses were gratifying.

Gracious hosts for the evening Get Help obliged listeners with a set almost solely drawn from the quartet's wonderful sophomore record The Good Green Earth, although said set closed memorably with the undeniable, pogoing title track to its 2008 debut The End Of The New Country. Unsurprisingly, the highlights of the set otherwise were our favorite tracks from The Good Green Earth: closer "Crooked Streets" -- rendered here without the sadly beautiful organ backing -- and the strident strummer "You Should Be Home By Now." We'd like to see these guys play more often.

You Should Be Home By Now by Get Help

Jamaica Plain-based Soccermom brought the evening to a kaleidoscopic close with a dazzling set forged from dense guitars and desperate vocals. The quartet, fronted by longtime scenemaker Dan Parlin, was simply brilliant, regularly bending over-driven chords and slide guitar around a decisive rhythmic attack. New drummer Justin Kehoe, he formerly of The Migration Trap, was remarkably fluid and understated behind the drum kit, and seems to be a perfect complement to the extant Soccermom alchemy. We heard new material in the set and it gives us high hopes that the band will garner the recognition it deserves very soon -- if only from the legions of music fans out there waiting for a contemporary take on early Lilys or early Polvo. Soccermom intends to issue later this year a 10" EP titled You Are Not Going To Heaven, and we've heard some of the recordings and they are terrific. If you haven't heard the band's debut single, here's one of the tunes.

Soccermom's "High On Dad"

E.R. and Get Help fans can catch Mssrs. Rodriguez and Skalicky in their natural habitat fronting The Beatings this Friday -- while R.S.V.P.s last -- in Charlestown at an event being helmed by the RSL Blog. So get with that. Soccermom returns to the stage Saturday night at The Beachcomber in Quincy, and again July 16 at Precinct in Somerville, Massachusetts for the Guillermo Sexo record release party.

Get Help Record Release Party With E.R., Soccermom | May 26 | PA's Lounge

Be Prepared: Get Help | The Good Green Earth | 10 May

Midriff Records will release next month the sophomore set from this, the other Beatings side project, Get Help. Fast on the heels of Beatings ying Eldridge Rodriguez' recent solo effort You Are Released, Beatings yang Tony Skalicky (along with compadres including Mike Ingenthron) readies The Good Green Earth for delivery to the masses May 10. The 11-song set is a wholly satisfying amalgamation of all your favorite fruit. "A Brittle World" piggybacks on a melody from Pixies' timeless and delightful "La La Love You;" affecting closer "Crooked Streets" charts a soulful march into a two-dimensional wooden sunset with the same wry resignation as They Might Be Giants' "Road Movie To Berlin" (organ and all). The final lyric of "Crooked Streets" -- a dense, barroom holler, "There's too much background noise as the saints come driving through" -- is just icing on top of icing.

Perhaps the highlight of an album filled with highlights is curiously sequenced at track 8, the desperate strummer "You Should Be Home By Now." Dig the stream below. Get Help has just announced a Boston record release show, which will transpire at PA's Lounge May 26 [details]. Additional acts on the bill include the aforementioned Eldridge Rodriguez and Clicky Clicky faves Soccermom. That's a hot show. We reviewed Get Help's full-length debut The End Of The New Country here in 2008.

You Should Be Home By Now by Get Help

The New Sound Of Slack: Soccermom Surfaces Slowly

[Left to right: The chair reserved for William Scales, David Kaplan, Danielle Deveau, Dan Parlin]
In the midst of conversation half of the party at the table in the front of the room pauses at the sound of the beginning of the Dinosaur Jr. b-side "Quicksand," only to realize that the tune on the hi-fi at the subterranean Harvard Square bar early Saturday afternoon is actually David Bowie's "Andy Warhol." Unsurprisingly, minutes earlier Dan Parlin and Danielle Deveau offered in just-about-unison "nineties" as an overarching musical influence shared among the four members of the rising, Boston-based indie rock concern Soccermom. Mr. Parlin, who fronts and plays guitar in the band, explains that, despite a suggestion that early '90s Chapel Hill and Louisville post-rock sounds echo perceptibly in Soccermom's forthcoming debut single, the common ground is just generally "nineties."

On the single, Soccermom sets off new parts and bridges with a patient efficacy, powershrugs into exuberant crescendoes with nonchalance. The song "High On Dad" opens with a pleasantly familiar, Pixies-ish ascending bass line and finally introduces urgent vocals more than three-quarters of the way through. Everything about Soccermom's music seems informed not only by the best music of two decades past, but also a measured, casual attitude toward crafting good music. Soccermom abides.

The band has percolated for about five years, from its earliest days when Parlin began four-tracking in San Francisco following a stint at Mass Art in Boston. He returned to Massachusetts in 2006, but his music rode the jumpseat while he played with Boston acts including E.R., Get Help and The Spanish Armada (all of the Midriff Records cohort). Only after Ms. Deveau, Soccermom's bassist, threw in her lot with the band did the project gain something resembling momentum. Asked why the band has finally gelled, why it is only now getting around to releasing a first single, Parlin and Deveau point to a collective caesura among the various competing projects. In due course fellow E.R. sideman and Spanish Armada principal William Scales enlisted as a second guitarist, and not long after amiable Spanish Armada drummer David Kaplan claimed the drum stool.

Underscoring Soccermom's unhurried nature is that its show this Friday at PA's Lounge in Somerville, Mass. is only the fifth-ish it has played despite debuting live two years ago. Friday's show was to have been a record release gig for the single, which also includes the rocker "Bill Cosby In Glamorous Chains," but certain delays mean a May gig at O'Brien's or a contemplated June live date are more likely to serve that purpose. Either way seems fine with Soccermom. Despite close ties to the Midriff Records, the band is self-releasing the vinyl single, and it expects to have stock in hand by the end of the month. The foursome envisions additional singles down the road, and expresses no sense of urgency to cut a full-length record for now. Soccermom abides.

Soccermom -- "High On Dad"

Soccermom: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

Review: Get Help | The End Of The New Country [MP3]

The release (well, pending release) of New York duo Get Help's solid debut is as good an occasion as any to give thanks for the stalwart musicians out there who make dependable indie rock. Not dancepunk, not nu-rave, not electroclash, not... well, you get the picture. There are now countless bands, and many of them chase countless, cycling trends. Thankfully there are still plenty of acts making great music without aping the latest tight-legged or baggy-arsed hype-riders. Like The New Year. Like Thalia Zedek. And like Get Help.

The web site of Boston- and New York-based indie rock giants The Beatings continues to offer its message, "welcome to the country." So it is hard not to view the title The End Of The New Country as a sort of response, what with 50% of Get Help being comprised by Beatings guitarist and co-fronter Tony Skalicky. There is definitely a sense of old endings and new beginnings baked into the tracks on The End Of The New Country, particularly the anthemic rocker "Red Jacket Orchards" (a real place, incidentally -- the weird thing is we found that reference totally by accident) and the pensive strummer "Life Is Full Of Surprises." The other half of the the duo -- which is augmented for live performances by various labelmates and cohorts -- is Mike Ingenthron of Strikes Again. All three of the aforementioned acts record for Midriff Records, a bi-city collective formed by The Beatings seven years ago. With all those tight relationships in place, it is little wonder that Mssrs. Skalicky and Ingenthron's record doesn't stray far from the Grade A indie rock The Beatings trade in, but it is certainly more than a small comfort.

Like the solo efforts of The Beatings' Eldridge Rodriquez, Get Help doesn't fully embrace the kinetic squawl and electric snarl the characterizes the most compelling Beatings tracks. Instead, The End Of The New Country is as much as collection of moods as it is a group of songs. To that end, Get Help deploys reverbs, acoustic guitars and keys ("Travelers Shave Kit," "Punishing Good Deeds") with the same facility as the distortion levied in the balls-to-the-wall title track. As far as points of reference are concerned, the ballad "All Else Fails" is reminiscent of Yo La Tengo's "Tears Are In Your Eyes," as is the looping guitar at the close of the aforementioned "Travelers Shave Kit. The breezy rocker "It Begins Well" sounds like newer New Radiant Storm King. Mostly of course, Get Help's music sounds like good indie rock. Midriff Records releases The End Of The New Country Oct. 14, and the band will perform a record release show at Great Scott the following night. Now get a load of the title track.

Get Help -- "The End Of The New Country" -- The End Of The New Country
[right click and save as]
[pre-order The End Of The New Country from Midriff right here]

Get Help: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

Related Coverage:

That Was The Show That Was: The Beatings | TT The Bear's
That Was The Show That Was: E.R. | TT The Bear's
Review: Eldridge Rodriguez | This Conspiracy Against Us
Review: The Beatings | Holding On To Hand Grenades