Chip ‘Tudes

Live Review

Oct 20

Chiptuners Battlemode closed out a hump day’s bill at Midway Cafe on Wednesday, 19 October 2022. The two-piece served as an electronic chaser to a night dominated by guitar-driven acts. Trash Robot, bikethrasher, and Edward Glen played in support.

Is Auburndale’s Edward Glen a person? Or a band? A band with a name that sounds like a person? Their Bandcamp credits songwriting to Edward Glen and Isaiah Johnson. Johnson is credited elsewhere as a drummer, but no individual named Edward Glen is listed as playing an instrument.

It’s not uncommon to credit songwriting to the band as a whole. It’s also not uncommon to give credit to individuals within the band. But it is unusual to credit songwriting to the band as a whole AND individuals within the band. Which is it? What is going on here? Are we missing an obvious solution to this puzzle? Let us know in the comments.

All we know is that four musicians took the stage to open as Edward Glen: your classic rock n roll quartet of two guitars, bass, and drums. The sound was jangly guitar pop with some bar band grease in the wheels. Shades of Gin Blossoms. The frontman delivered stage banter at a million miles an hour. He asked the crowd if they believed in God, and then followed up that theological zinger with a plug for the Edward Glen merch table. Rumor has it the band, person, merch table is playing a Charlie’s Kitchen Monday in late November.

Boston’s bikethrasher served up a robust homage to Nirvana. Chugging guitars with plenty of low end combined with power drumming to craft heavy pop. Just like Cobain, the vocals had a tinge of country mawkishness. Their song “Swamp Rat” led off with a bass line that’s a dead ringer for “About A Boy.” Extra points for shouting out the rent crisis in America. You’re goddamn right the rent is too damn high.

Every Sunday night the Midway Cafe plays host to Midway or the Highway, an open mic. There’s this one regular comedian, who is best known by his signature nasal guffaw, which signals that he’s arrived at the punchline whether the audience is laughing or not. It’s a bit that can turn a middling joke into a kind of meta-comedic callback.

The penultimate act of the night Trash Robot manufactured its own callback bit. After every song the frontman would announce the name of his band with the exaggerated delivery of a carnival barker. He also repeatedly pitched the branded earplugs that were available at his merch table, which, ear safety aside, doesn’t seem like the best advertisement for your band.

Regardless, the Boston trio played a solid set of elemental rock that flirted with the wide open guitar landscapes of kraut rock.

Headliner Battlemode was a chiptune curveball on a night full of six-string heroes. The two-piece included one musician on the synth and another one fiddling with circuit boards via a modded Gameboy. It was a real effed up sample splatter of 8-bit lounge music. Chiptune can be a tough genre to communicate onstage. Extra points to Battlemode for not just vamping over pre-recorded tracks. Whatever that Gameboy rig was doing, it was doing it live.