The lovely woman who would become CoolMom and I spent a bit of the early 90s living in Hoboken. As I looked for parking last night, the excellent self-titled debut from Swearin’ coming through my car’s speakers, I was thinking about all of the music -- Built to Spill, Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Liz Phair -- that we used to listen to back then. I’d headed in to go to Maxwell’s for Shellshag’s record release show for Shellshag Forever.
It was almost as if the show’s lineup had been created specifically for me. Every single band on the bill was responsible for one of my favorite albums from the last year and a half. The common thread linking all of the bands, in addition to some type of association with Shellshag's label Don Giovanni Records, was a debt to the music from the time I spent in Hoboken.
Great Thunder opened the evening. The project of Katie Crutchfield (a.k.a. “Ol’ Waxie”) and Swearin’s / Waxahatchee’s Keith Spencer, last night they also featured Swearin’s Allison Crutchfield on drums and Radiator Hospital’s Sam Cook-Parrott on bass. The band played selections from both last year’s Sounds of Great Thunder and their new Strange Kicks EP (both are available as “name your price downloads” from Great Thunder’s Bandcamp page).
Unsurprisingly, Great Thunder’s sound is similar to Waxahatchee’s though with a heavier tilt toward the rock end of things. The set was great, and if “K and K” want Great Thunder to get as big as Waxahatchee, they just have to go for it.
Hilly Eye, who’s Reasons to Live is still a contender for my Albums of the Year list, were up next. The duo of Amy Klein (guitar) and Catherine Tung (drums) feature less of a traditionally pop sound than the other bands that were on the bill. Klein’s swirling guitar loops and haunting vocals, and Tung’s intricate drumming filled the small space on cuts like “Jersey City,” “Animal,” and “Amnesia” with a noise that still does owe a great deal to 1990s lo-fi.
Swearin’ were next to perform. Listening to their self-titled debut as I drove to Hoboken reminded me what a great record the band put out last year; and I, honestly, can’t recommend it highly enough. Allison Crutchfield and Keith Spencer were back on stage, this time with Kyle Gilbride (guitar/vocals) and Jeff Bolt (drums). They opened with the Gilbride-sung “Here to Hear” from that debut LP, and I’m still not able to get Gilbride’s vocal similarity to Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch out of my head. Other songs from the record, including the Crutchfield-fronted album standouts “Kenosha” and “Just” along with the more punk-influenced “Kill ‘em with Kindess” and a new song, injected some serious energy into a crowd that had grown in anticipation of what was coming next.
What came next was New Brunswick’s Screaming Females. By this time, Maxwell’s was packed, wild cheers going up at the sight of Marissa Paternoster, in her trademark Wednesday Addams frock, simply helping to prepare the stage.
The set that followed was an incendiary example that Paternoster and Screaming Females are back at full strength. Bassist King Mike and drummer Jarrett D. provided the foundation for Paternoster’s Mascis / Martsch / Corgan-influenced guitar heroics. Even in its toned-down Maxwell’s version, the audience response to songs like “It All Means Nothing,” “Rotten Apple,” and “Expire” was ferocious, beer and sweat flying. When she wasn’t taking the entire mic into her mouth while wailing a lyric, Paternoster was turning her face ceiling-ward, eyes rolled up into her head while she amazed everyone with her fretwork.
Like each of the bands before, Screaming Females thanked Shellshag for including them on the celebration. This time though, Screaming Females advised their fans to stay for the finale, telling them they’d “regret it forever” if they left. Let's just say that there was significantly more room to move around by the time Shellshag took the stage.
I, personally, was happy for the additional space; and it didn’t detract from the energy of Shellshag’s set one bit. The lighted mic contraption featured on the album cover of Shellshag Forever came to center-stage. John “Shellhead” Driver and Jennifer Shagawat took their positions on either side and exuberantly performed Shellshag Forever in its entirety. Screaming Females’ King Mike was in the audience, right up front singing every lyric.
When Shellshag completed their twenty-seven minute lo-fi masterpiece, they brought Screaming Females back on stage to perform “Green Vapors,” which the bands co-wrote and recorded for Screaming Females’ Chalk Tape cassette / digital EP. The rest of the set included earlier Shellshag cuts, including the excellent “Resilient Bastard” and a cover of The Cure’s (to me, though, it’s always Dinosaur Jr.’s) “Just Like Heaven.”
As the band built a tower from Shag’s drum kit, topped by Shell’s guitar, to close the main set, chants of “Ten more songs!” went up from the crowd. The band acquiesced and went into Liz Phair’s “Fuck and Run” from her twenty year old debut masterpiece. It was appropriate, I thought, as I found myself taken back to the sound of Exile In Guyville throughout the evening.
Shellshag built their show-ending tower a second and final time. They embraced. They kissed. They climbed down from the stage and embraced several fans.
It was a triumphant night for Shellshag and all of the bands on the bill. Even the guy who brought his own tambourine, triangle, and maracas to play along throughout the night couldn’t put a damper on things. For me, it was a chance to see a bill bursting with bands whose work I’ve enjoyed immensely over the last year. To see those bands, who have managed to create some modern classics by re-interpreting the sounds of early indie rock, at one of the cradles of indie rock music was an experience I won’t soon forget.
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