A musical preview of tracks we love from Hope Fest 2023 artists.

Is that Ronald Reagan on the album cover? Strange vibrations from Boston’s self-proclaimed “worst noise rock band” Fat Randy. “Noise rock” is a great catch-all genre for music that wants to push in a lot of different directions at once. It’s not necessarily noisier than non-”noise rock.” You hear a boundary surfing on our highlighted track “Walgreens”, which flaunts the jazz horns upfront, transmogrifies into a skit about trying to fill a Oxycontin prescription, lives a lounge half-life, then explodes into a B-52s-meets-John Zorn mashup. Needless to say, the pharmacist calls security.

New Forms

Hardcore punk miniatures. That’s what New Forms EP I don't want to live my life again is built around. And you reply: “But aren’t all punk songs ‘miniature’, if you just mean short?” First, no, not all punk songs are short. Check out this list. Second, ‘miniature’ means something besides just short or small. An artwork in miniature is a self-contained world that uses poetic condensation to say a lot with a little. Think of haikus, or Anton Webern’s Op. 11 No. 2. Our highlighted track “Spirals” plays a similar gambit in 38 seconds.

Gut Health

You’ve got to check out Gut Health live. The frontman rocks the mic like a VFW Hall punker with a Chris Cornell howl and a suitcase full of FX tricks. (Sometimes he rocks a cast too?) Our highlighted track “Wish”, off a trio of demos available on Bandcamp, is an uptempo, heavy rock burner. You can hear the predilection for shifty and shaped textures as the chord progressions get funneled through the stompbox grinder. Between the six-string maelstrom and layers of modded vocals, the song feels like one sustained shout into the void.

Bad At Drawing

Boston’s Bad At Drawing doesn’t play around with style points on this gutpunch punk rocker “Cashier.” Or do they? Check out the midsong interlude, a kind of half tempo sweet talk moment that foregrounds a melody in place of the Pound Town chord progression. Lasts just long enough to catch your breath, then you’re tossed back into the stomp pedal, three chord blender. Bad At Drawing show this kind of tonal range all over their EP Slug. But it’s presented in high contrast on our highlighted track.

Lobohombre

Local Boston punk giggers LoboHombre find their way up to Salem to share their bilingual, uptempo bangers. If you live in America and don’t know what “Soy feliz” means in 2023, then god help you. At 1:25, don’t take a bathroom break or you’ll miss it. Quick, fast, and only as dirty as the club they’re playing in. Where are they playing at Hope Fest? Old Town Hall, last we heard…

Here’s the Who, What, When, Where, and Why of Hope Fest 2023.