Spring Break
Next stop: Boston for many bands
The concert calendar for the Boston area is looking heavy, as rock, hip-hop and indie acts stop at local venues.
by Andrea Fineman
Managing Editor
Arts | 4/1/08
Posted online at 11:50 PM EST on 3/31/08
While the weeks leading up to Passover break may be an explosion of tests and papers in students' lives, the next couple of weeks will also bear witness to a number of Boston-area spring concert tour stops. The rock and indie luminaries and buzz bands will converge on a couple of local venues. With the demolition of the Avalon and the Axis to create a House of Blues-owned superclub expected to open by the end of the year, Boston's Paradise Lounge and Cambridge's Middle East venues seem to have major concerts booked every day from the beginning of April.
The Middle East, as usual, seems to have cornered the indie market; cool kids VHS or Beta (April 7) and buzz band Pissed Jeans (April 12) are a couple of the venue's offerings next week. One lesser-known band playing the venue, however, deserves special attention. Scott Reitherman, who performs with a group of musicians as Throw Me the Statue, will make a stop at the Middle East April 8 with local singer Casey Dienel, who similarly performs under an unusual name, White Hinterland.
Though Reitherman's been recording since 2004, the group only signed to a national label (the Bloomington, Ind.-based Secretly Canadian Records) at the end of 2007. Since then, however, the label has been intensely promoting TMTS' first album, Moonbeams, with considerable results in that barometer of indie music, the blogosphere.
And for good reason, too. Reitherman's music takes the interesting-guy-with-a-guitar formula and adds on samples, synth and other exotic sounds. Songs like "About to Walk," the album's highlight, achieve that delicate partnership of nonsensical lyrics and driving melody that makes certain songs absolutely infectious despite the inscrutable meaning or non-meaning contained within. Words like "Favorite space is a palindrome/Where I talk in a cannonball/And I never have to share/And where nobody can see" may not look so good on the page, but coming out of laptop's speakers, they'll have you dancing in your seat.
The Middle East, as usual, seems to have cornered the indie market; cool kids VHS or Beta (April 7) and buzz band Pissed Jeans (April 12) are a couple of the venue's offerings next week. One lesser-known band playing the venue, however, deserves special attention. Scott Reitherman, who performs with a group of musicians as Throw Me the Statue, will make a stop at the Middle East April 8 with local singer Casey Dienel, who similarly performs under an unusual name, White Hinterland.
Though Reitherman's been recording since 2004, the group only signed to a national label (the Bloomington, Ind.-based Secretly Canadian Records) at the end of 2007. Since then, however, the label has been intensely promoting TMTS' first album, Moonbeams, with considerable results in that barometer of indie music, the blogosphere.
And for good reason, too. Reitherman's music takes the interesting-guy-with-a-guitar formula and adds on samples, synth and other exotic sounds. Songs like "About to Walk," the album's highlight, achieve that delicate partnership of nonsensical lyrics and driving melody that makes certain songs absolutely infectious despite the inscrutable meaning or non-meaning contained within. Words like "Favorite space is a palindrome/Where I talk in a cannonball/And I never have to share/And where nobody can see" may not look so good on the page, but coming out of laptop's speakers, they'll have you dancing in your seat.
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