Shawn Massak
506 Massachusetts ave
Lunenburg, MA 01462
If I like your record I'll review it. CD, Vinyl, or Tape accepted.
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Mass Recovery Fest Day 1 Recap
I started Mass Recovery in 2005 when I was 17 years old. Initially it was conceptualized as a label to put out releases from friends’ bands and to promote shows in the area, most of which happened at Andrew Hall, a church space in Lunenburg, MA, 5 minutes down the road from my parent’s house. The label never caught on, though I did release one compilation CD and a compilation cassette (which my girlfriend, Erica, and I recorded on borrowed boomboxes in real-time). I don’t do too many shows at the hall anymore either, though every year I come up with the $420 to rent the space and put on Mass Recovery Fest.
To be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect this year. My friends who were involved in the local music scene all grew up and moved out, graduated and got real jobs or at least managed to move out of their parent’s houses. My brother’s friends who came to constitute a local music community in their own right, all go to college now and are crammed into Boston dorms, sneaking beers in bookbags past suspicious security guards. To be doing shows at Andrew Hall feels to me a little bit like Never Never Land (the fictional place not Michael Jackson’s kid friendly ranch) where everyone else stays teenagers but I just get older. I know this feeling is shared by other people still booking shows in the area, though I think it’s necessary to applaud people like Ryan Scott, director of the Umbrella Gallery, who still puts on shows almost every weekend in Fitchburg in order to cultivate a cohesive music community. Anyway, Mass Recovery Fest is a little way for me to continue doing one of the things I like best in the place I grew up in, a very small step for community and continuity.
Day 1 Recap (All these great pictures were taken by Adam Testagrossa who doesn’t get paid to take them but still does anyway).
The first show began with a performance by Enter the Champion!, a post rock quartet composed of local high school seniors. I’ve seen various incarnations of this band over the past few years and I can say with confidence that they’ve finally found their niche; EtC takes cues from Explosions in the Sky epics and makes it their own by stripping away the verbosity and offering a sound that is both tight and concise. Though the band doesn’t have any recordings, and not much in the way of a presence online save a couple youtube videos of a battle of the bands concert, be on the lookout for these guys to release a demo in the very near future.
Up next was Mike DeBenedictis, a Cape Cod singer songwriter who I had the pleasure of touring the Northeast with last March. Mike’s full length debut, Environs, is one of my favorite records of 2011, the songs have a sort of campfire candor to them, a raw acoustic sound that possesses both a woodsy sense of folk wisdom and emotional intensity. Imagine Henry David Thoreau fronting Dashboard Confessional. Can’t picture it? Listen to the record for free on bandcamp. Mike played a bunch of songs off Environs, including the fantastic jab at blind faith, “Wayward Stay”, and the road warrior anthem, “Like a Virginian” while also throwing in a few covers, my favorite being Joanna Newsom’s “Peach, Plum, Pear”.
Outsider Joe had everyone take a seat for his set. With the shades drawn and blacklights illuminating the soundboard of synths, sequencers, and samplers, Joe played his songs—a juxtaposition of darkwave longing and awkwardly danceable electropop. The fingerless glove aficionado and programming machine captivated the cross legged crowd who chimed and chanted to “Lovesick” a track off of aLIVEbeehive released in January of this year. Outsider Joe will actually be releasing a second album this year in July, the release show set for his basement in Athol.
After the blacklit story circle had disbanded, I nervously turned on the lights back on, opened the curtains, and stood at the other end of the hall to play an Antennae Wedding set. Erica and I got a warm reception, a half serious encore request, and some people even sang along. It was one of my favorite sets I’ve played at Andrew Hall (and I’ve played quite a few). It felt good to play an acoustic indie-pop set in the place where I once swung mics around and rolled on the floor screaming.
Trunks and Tales, the solo project of Pennsylvania native, Daniel Anderson, took the floor next. Dan’s emotive songs echoed through the hall as he yelled over an acoustic guitar and distortion pedal. Dan performed a couple new songs – to be released on an upcoming full length – a few off of Standing Still Fast, and covered an I Hate Myself song as well as a Give Up the Ghost track. Every time I see Trunks and Tales, I have been blown away by Dan’s ability to channel Eisold-ian passion and lyrical brilliance into a project that sounds like an acoustic amalgam of Jawbreaker and Mineral.
One of my favorite performances from last year’s Mass Recovery Fest was from the Thin Heir, the Boston based romp-and-stomp-more-folk-than-punk collective. Though the Thin Heir played their last show the weekend before, Sam Kelley and two other Thin Heir alumni (Chris Cooke and Eva Walsh) came out this year to play some new material. Equipped with drums, a violin, guitar, and banjo, Sam and friends had everyone in the audience clapping along (and even a few ambitious people line dancing). They concluded the set with a folky rendition of the Saves the Day favorite “I’m Sorry I’m Leaving”.
Up next was The Front Bottoms, a Jersey band who have been getting a lot of buzz lately after their signing with Bar None Records. Tonight was the first time I’ve seen the duo with a laptop backtrack which offered up audio clips and danceable synth tracks to the acoustic guitar and drumset setup. Brian Sella, guitar and vocals, sang clever songs about casual steroid use, the bottom of swimming pools, and killing his dad with a baseball bat while Matt Uychich broke two drum heads and yelled into a bullhorn. This was arguably my favorite performance of the night and seamlessly tied together the intimacy and honesty of acoustic singer-songwriter music with the energy of an ADD addled electronica band.
Fishing the Sky, the minimalist brainchild of local musician Rob Hughes played next. The one man band –toting a bass, drumkit, and laptop – covered the room in warm electronic waves; a sound that is hard to pin down but provides the perfect soundtrack for late night drives and slept-in mornings. Imagine if Appleseed Cast’s Sagarathma was a little bit sexier while still possessing the sleepy brilliance of Mum. After playing an intoxicating set, the lights were turned out completely and a projector spun colored rings on the other side of the room.
Under the color wheel sat the hooded figure of MAGE, the alias of noisy ambient local artist Nico Robuccio. Sitting quietly on a piano bench, clicking away at a computer screen, Nico tapped at a cavalcade of foot pedals and slid a screwdriver around the neck of his guitar. Mage has crafted a sound that is both darkly brooding and softly buoyant; soundscapes that cover desolate terrain and beautiful panoramic vistas.
When the last noisy notes were pulled from the air, Joe and Ryan of Every Other Country stood behind a small fortress of synthesizers and sequencers for the second to last set of the evening. Strobe lights and a projector screen set the mood for an off-kilter dance party – a droney rave for videogame enthusiasts. EOX had the room alive with everyone moving their feet and chanting along to “Man Opener” the bands abstract and anthemic favorite.
The Bynars closed out the night with a memorable array of songs off their new self-titled full length. The endlessly catchy, synth-poppy, upbeat power pop set was the perfect way to end the evening. The Bynars are both tight and inventive, one of the best bands in Boston who have cultivated a sound that is accessible and fun while also indulging music snobs with smart song writing that echoes 1960’s beach pop while beckoning to modern geek sheik synth rock.
After the night ended, equipment was broken down and the hall cleaned up. Erica, Mike DeBenedictis, the Front Bottoms, and Dan from Trunks and Tales all came back to my parent’s house to play street beer* and watch movies.
* Street beer is a game I learned from Ryan from State Champion. To play you need 2 6-Sided dice, 2 plastic cups, and a lot of beer. The game starts off with a high roll to see who becomes the dice master. The dice master then challenges a player, the player has to drink both plastic cups (around 1/3-1/2 full) before the dice master rolls a 7 or 11. If both cups aren’t finished before a 7 or 11 is rolled, then the cups are refilled and that person starts again. If the person challenged does finish both cups, they become the dice master and they can challenge someone else. The only rule is that the dice can’t be touched until the person challenged touches the cups. Otherwise there are no rules, I’ve seen fruit thrown, fortresses built, and dice hidden in pants.
Photo reblogged from Erica Smerica with 5 notes
This is a thing. Anyone who wants one can send me their address to shawnmassak@gmail.com.
Cover of the Mass Recovery Zine Shawn and I were able to put together. The click through link is the massrecovery tumblr page, with a few of the band reviews featured in this month’s zine, songs and will have more info in the future.
I’m really pumped on how the zine came out, the initial feedback we got and the push do these once a month. Add the tumblr? I think we have 3 followers right now. =(
Source: smericaerica
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The Brave Little Abacus is a band I’ve wrote about before. The three-piece Dover, New Hampshire residents elude any easy genre signification and instead showcase a sound that is ebullient and exuberant with the irreverent urgency of Cap’n Jazz enmeshed with geeky electronic-but-not-quite-chiptune programming. The band members, Adam Demirjian (guitar and vocals), Zach Onett (keyboards), and Andrew Ryan (bass), are unconventionally brilliant songwriters who have worked tirelessly to put out a release every year since their inception in 2008.
The song featured here, “45 minutes away from ‘somewhere out there’”, is off of their newest EP, Okumay, scheduled to be released in early July on 7”. “45 minutes” is a fast paced romp through a synthesizer playground, with occasional slow-downs into twinkly guitar territory. The lyrics are a testament to childhood wonderment with Demirjian falsetto-crooning, “your hands on you side, you had pride in your new form and how you noticed me noticing big bulging eyes like frogs in the hands of boyhood.”
You can catch them early on Day 2 of Mass Recovery Fest and on June 3rd at the Hillstock Music Festival in Brookyln, NY with the Wild and Laura Stevenson.
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Confidon is an emo revivalist three piece from Londonderry, New Hampshire. I first caught them last summer in Wilbraham, Massachusetts playing in an empty inground pool. Needless to say, their sound, somewhere in between End of the Ring Wars era Appleseed Cast and the American Football self-titled EP, immediately resonated with me—not exactly what I expected from three dudes in headbands and sandals. Regardless of their head and footwear preferences, Anthony DeCarolis (bass, vocals), Andrew French (guitar), and Keith Vecchione (drums) have created a sound both beautifully nostalgic and excitingly new, worthy of repeated listening and Get Rad message board posts.
The song featured here, “H.D. Thoreau was a Liar”, comes from their debut EP, Four Song(s). The guitars twinkle behind sentimental vocals, at first reminiscent of Pop Unknown’s slow-and-low intonation and then coming to a crescendo with the Salinger-eque commentary, “Just give me one good reason I should believe
in anyone or anything.” You can download the entire EP for free here and learn all the words in time for Day 2 of Mass Recovery Fest.
Mage is the ambient solo project of Massachusetts native, Nico Robuccio. The former guitarist of the fantastic, albeit short-lived, From Sky to Sea has been working fastidiously since their dissolution last year to produce his debut LP, entitled Prisoner Cinema. While writing and recording the album, Nico released four demo tracks in February available on bandcamp.
“Fogbank”, the track featured here, is the first of these demos. The seven minute opus is a beautifully orchestrated soundscape replete with thunderous crashes slowrolling behind the pedal crafted guitar hums. The sound is reminiscent of Eluvium and Hammock or perhaps a minimalistic Explosions in the Sky. In the words of Robuccio (or rather in the words of a facebook status update that was undoubtedly never meant to be quoted seriously), “throw on some headphones and spark one up.”
Listen to “Fogbank” and the rest of the demo on the Mage Bandcamp.
Mage is playing Day 1 of Mass Recovery Fest on Friday, May 20th.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Hey Everyone,
The lineup is posted for the fourth annual Mass Recovery Fest.
| Friday, May 20th | 5PM @ Andrew Hall (39 Main Street, Lunenburg, MA 01462) | $7 or $10 for both nights |
10:30PM - The Bynars | “Deliriously danceable” indie pop
10:00PM - Every Other Country | Awesome electronic duo
9:30PM - Mage | Ambient soundscapes
9:00PM - Fishing the Sky | One dude, a bass, a laptop, and drums
8:30PM - the Front Bottoms | NJ | Brilliant, catchy, irreverent two-piece
8:00PM - Sam Kelley | Country-folk ex-Thin Heir
7:30PM - Trunks & Tales | PA | Driving singer songwriter stuff
7:00PM - Antennae Wedding | Boy/Girl acoustic pop
6:30PM - Outsider Joe | One man programming machine
6:00PM - Mike DeBenedictis | Campfire sing-along songs
5:30PM - Enter the Champion | Post-rock jams
|Saturday, May 21st | 5PM @ Andrew Hall (39 Main Street, Lunenburg, MA 01462) | $7 or $10 for both nights |
10:30PM - Onslo | Loud indie trio
10:00PM - Settler | Instrumental and driving
9:30PM - The Only Ghost in Town | NJ | Shoegaze fuzz pop
9:00PM - Short Fuse Burning | Small brown beard rock
8:30PM - Confidon | NH | Noodly and powerful
8:00PM - All Day Baby | Pop punk ex-My Place in the Cosmos
7:30PM - Greys | Canada | Amazing Post Hardcore
7:00PM - Challenge the Throne | Rock, Rock, Indie Rock
6:30PM - Save Ends | Girl fronted pop punk with keys
6:00PM - Comma | NH | Space Rock
5:30PM - The Brave Little Abacus | NH | Experiments in awesome
|Sunday, May 22nd | 5PM @ The Rabbit Hole (805 Main Street, Fitchburg, MA 01462) | Free|
7:30 - Lion Cub | Catchy indie-pop with programming, guitars, and a glock!
6:45 - Greys | Canada | So good you’ll want to see them again
6:00 - Twin Cyclist | Lowellites 90’s emo
5:15 - Brian Dickens | Local indie singer-songwriter
I’m really excited about the lineup. There are a ton of great bands and artists coming from all over the place to play this.
Every couple of days I’ll be posting a short blurb for each of the bands playing Mass Recovery Fest. To start things off, I want to talk about the band coming in from the farthest away.
Greys are a four piece post-hardcore outfit from Toronto, Ontario. Their sound can be located somewhere between Refused and Snapcase; a driving blend of math-rock time changes, louder-than-loud grungy guitar distortion, and bursting vocals delivered urgently and honestly. Though the band played their first show together just nine months ago, Greys have developed a sound well beyond their years that is both conceptually smart and technically sound.
The song here, entitled “Black Lodge”, recorded on analog tape last December, will be featured on their debut EP, Ultra Sorta. The 5-track record will be released on Concession Records as a 7” in blue, red, and black vinyl on April 30th. You can pick one up and watch Greys’ explosive set on Day 2 and 3 of Mass Recovery Fest.
- Shawn Massak
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]The Only Ghost in Town – The Summer Was Over Before it Began
The Summer Was Over Before it Began is the first release from The Only Ghost in Town, the nom de plume for bespectacled New Jersey native Dan Saraceni (also of buzz-worthy indie band By Surprise, recently signed to Topshelf Records). The Summer Was Over is Saraceni’s ode to obscure lo-fi pop; his eyes only looking up from shoegazing to seek out the first Castor CD on Discogs. The album, originally released on cassette by Long Island’s Rok Lok records, has been self-released on CD-R with 3 additional songs, expanding on TOGIT’s drone-and-moan fuzzed out blend of whirring guitar distortion and faded vocals.
The album begins with “Aware”, which begins with 5 seconds of twinkling guitar atop reverby vocals (“And I wonder where the summer goes”) before urgently plunging into strident guitar chops. On just listening to the first track a few things become readily apparent. One, Saraceni has listened to quite a bit of Further in his time (it’s no secret, there’s a Further cover a few songs into the album). Two, the lo-fi production fits the music like a youth-large My Bloody Valentine T-Shirt. Three, despite the vocals being buried and sometimes indiscernible, the songwriting is oddly catchy and I find myself mumbling along in the car and humming the melodies at my desk at work.
The album is impressive even when it breaks down the wall of sound, tones down the distortion, and turns up the vocals. “Too Much” excises the tinny drums in favor of confessional Secret Stars-eque vocals where Saraceni asks “Is it so wrong to miss you when you’re gone? I think I’ve said too much now, you probably think I’m nuts.” “Too Much” is one of the longer songs on The Summer Was Over, clocking in at 3:11 (I’m sure Dan would appreciate a “Come Original” joke here), yet it doesn’t betray the short emotive bursts of the 1-2 minute tracks that drive the album.
In terms of the three additional songs, “Snowglobe” is a noisy trek through the halls of unrequited love, “Candid Summer” is an upbeat instrumental track that eases some of the sonic tension that binds the album, and lastly “I Know” offers a perfect closing track that brings the The Summer Was Over Before it Began full circle, exuding big guitar riffs, ebb and flow vocals that crest melodically during the chorus, and enough lo-fi distortion to make a young J Mascis jealous.
There are a few copies of The Summer Was Over Before it Began on cassette left at Rocklok, they are only $5 and close to selling out. The CD-R is available in the same place for $4. You can also stream the album on bandcamp.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]State Champion—Stale Champagne
This review is a solid six months overdue. This is not to say that Stale Champagne has gotten lost in the shuffle of my record collection (which is currently strewn over my bedroom with unsheathed vinyl sitting atop an out-of-order Wurlitzer). No, Stale Champagne has been spinning under the needle of my record player for months now. The CD copy is perpetually in my car stereo or in the pile of receipts and change in the center console, always at arm’s reach. The more I listened to Stale Champagne the more daunting it became to write a review that actually did justice to how good this record is. Well, better late than never.
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State Champion’s full band debut is in a word remarkable, a 40-minute long 8-song amalgam of the unabated twang of country western honesty and the sparse and raw instrumentation of ethereal indie rock. Ryan Davis sings these songs with a preacher’s zeal—a secular gospel underlies the album’s guitar distortion—and I find myself picturing the songs being played in an abandoned church turned honky-tonk. The vocals echo off the rafters with messy notes reverberating through dilapidated pews. A group of ghosts tap their feet to the drum and bass and hum along with the violin. They start to get rowdy during the end of “Keeping Time”, they stand with mouth’s agape, completely speechless, during “Come See What I Have Done”, and they demand an encore after “Just an Answer.”
That’s how I picture it in my head anyway. In terms of locating State Champion’s sound outside of my overindulgent (and not especially descriptive) imagination, they sound like Hank Williams Jr. discovering shoegaze or like Towns Van Zandt after a night of hitting the bottle and listening to the MC5. The Louisville natives’ go from the quiet contemplation of a Leonard Cohen song to the grating urgency of something by Fugazi without so much as blinking an eye. If this is confusing, try hearing all of this from a band that looks like Nirvana after getting stuck in Merle Haggard’s dressing room.
Stale Champagne opens with “Thanks Given” a track I had fallen in love with previously through a collection of lo-fi demos entitled Horse Paint (each with a different hand-drawn cover and tracklisting). The song is a bit more polished here, but still possesses Davis’s trademark muddled guitar playing while his whisky-worn voice winces, “Is it so wrong to just give thanks for a holiday?” and offers a follow up with the steady clang of drums and guitar noise amidst the howling proclamation, “There’s a hole in my chest where the sunshine don’t fit, but my heart still works and it bleeds through my shirt like a whip striking down the bandits and the Benedicts.” The song benefits from having a full band on board, with Mikie Poland on bass, Sabrina Rush on violin, and Aaron Osbourne on drums, concluding the song in a thundering crescendo.
State Champion is one of the few bands I can say have effectively married the intimacy, and impressive lyricism, of singer-songwriter compositions with the dynamic pull of a rock band. Davis’s writing is smart without being pretentious, imaginative without being verbose, and while it’s difficult to offer up one well written verse in an album full of exemplary lines, here is one from “Keeping Time”: “I drove to the white house in my church clothes just to see if you were sleeping on the lawn but all I found was freedom in a window blinking my name in neon, please keep it on. I fell asleep myself you know I was dreaming of the tri-state and beyond. I had Lincoln looking over me saying ‘fuck it man I guess the golden days are gone.’” The music matches Davis’s intonation perfectly—a dreamy organ purrs alongside the vocals until the drums kick in with “I had Lincoln looking over me,” and the song is carried out in foot-stomping alt-country fashion.
Stale Champagne is, as I said before, remarkable. All 8 songs are impressive, ambitious, and well-written. I can honestly say this is the best thing I’ve heard from Davis and crew so far, and furthermore, one of the best records I’ve listened to in the past year. Stale Champagne a limited pressing of 500 copies on clear vinyl. They are $15 on the Sophomore Lounge website. Buy one for yourself and everyone you know.
