Saturday Recap

Local giggers The Gypsy Moths and Paper Tigers kicked off a daylong bill that featured legends Sunny Day Real Estate, Vacationland heroes Weakened Friends, The Beths buzz, headliner Modest Mouse and more.

Two stages, music all day long, vendors, vinyl, and gaming arcades as far as the eye could see — who could catch it all?

Hump Day News caught up with Chris Conway, guitarist for Gypsy Moths, about what it felt like to play break the seal on the 2023 edition:

“We were just thrilled to be on the bill, and the timing was on our side as our new album Sounds On had just been released the day prior. Personal highlight was seeing people walk onto the field and start bobbing their heads and dancing to our stuff. We were the first band, and gates opened 30 minutes before our set so there were lots of folks coming in who looked like they were probably hearing us for the first time.”

Chris shouted out meeting new bands as a highpoint of the fest. Acts like Slothrust and Fantastic Cat were out-of-towners. But there was an impressive quotient of local talent performing at the Quincy fest, including Dutch Tulips, Shallow Pools, Weakened Friends, and Rum Bar Records labelmate Carissa Johnson. Seeing familiar acts in a new setting can be an eye-opener. Chris mentioned a pair of acts that he as especially excited for:

“Weakened Friends, as I have many friends who love them, and Carissa Johnson as I’ve seen her solo acoustic and love her records but had never seen her with a band. Both were so great!”

Bands are fans of bands too. In fact, they might be the biggest fans!

Blitzen Trapper

Straight outta Portland, Oregon! It’s Blitzen Trapper. More than a decade since the release of the band’s breakthrough LP Furr, hard to believe. The veterans rolled into Veterans Memorial Stadium with a band of four: guitar, bass, keys, and drums. On a night and day of heavier rock n roll to follow, the Portand Four delivered softer vibrations. The folk/rock blend cultivated a jammy vibe that wouldn’t be out of place in a wooded copse in upstate New York. Lay out some blankets. Soak it in. Extra points for a mindset a capella break. Fans could pull up close to the free-wheeling vocal adventure thanks to the newly-minted pit layout at In Between Days, which extended directly to the lip of the Arbella Stage and pretty damn near the lip of the Main Stage. Excellent!

Weakened Friends

Straight outta Portland, Maine! Weakened Friends. Whoever crafted the band schedule must have had a soft chuckle to themselves. Oregon to Maine, coast to coast, in the span of a single band change. The New Englanders brought a heavier sound, emo-charged rock n roll with a bit of a thrashpop mindset. Chock-full of hummable moments that walk you off a cliff into the maw of six-string & snare energetics. The band is still riding high on its critically-acclaimed LP Quitter. And the fans showed up too. You could hear a nice ripple of recognition roll through the crowd when the band broke into the revving motorcycle guitar chug of the album’s title track. Extra points for showcasing the most high energy bassist at the two-day fest.

Sunny Day Real Estate

The fest bookers must have had Sub Pop on their minds. Here comes Sunny Day Real Estate, another band with some of their best music released on the northwestern label. The alternative legends don’t have anything to prove in terms of music and legacy, having laid out the blueprint for a subsequent generation of emo rockers. The band also didn’t have any new music to showcase, having dropped their last record The Rising Tide in 2000.

The fans in Quincy didn’t come for new tunes though. They came for the live version of classic bangers unheard since their golden retriever pup Coby, or their infant child Olivia or Lucas, fatally scratched the last remaining Sunny Day Real Estate while left unattended in the study during a NFL Sunday Bar-B-Que. Maybe level up, go vinyl, and replace it with a deluxe 2xLP edition of How It Feels To Be Something On?

In case you thought accomplished and decorated artists were above petty jealousies, note the banter halfway through the set. Lead vocalist and guitarist Jeremy Enigk observed the massing numbers of fans posting up in front of the opposite stage. The double-barrelled stage attack of In Between Days 2023 meant the music could roll uninterrupted all day long, with one band setting up while another band performed. An unintended result, though, is that each band can eyeball the amount of fans that opted to simply wait in front of the other empty stage for the next act rather than hear/watch them play in the moment.

The Beths

Who was playing next on the opposite stage? The Beths, the New Zealand indie rockers who’ve made some waves with last year’s LP An Expert In A Dying Field and recent tours through New England and all points west.

Pop music is a fickle business. Business is a fickle business. If you’re not putting out new music, or nobody is listening to the new music you’re putting out, the world moves on.

The Beths are having a moment; if you looked, you spotted members of both Mint Green and Weakened Friends in the crowd digging the set. It’s easy listening indie rock, cut from classic cloth, with some kraut rock tendencies when they really open it up.

Does the giant inflatable fish head count as the most exotic bit of stagecraft in the two-day fest? You have to get creative when you’re playing a set in the light of day, without the benefit of nightfall to wow people with a lightshow. Not sure the fish head wowed people, but it definitely grabbed their attention as it slowly, surely, regally inflated into its fully massy brilliance during the first song.

Modest Mouse

The veteran indie rock band Modest Mouse enjoyed the privilege of closing the festival. Dusk waned with the first few notes of the set, giving the light engineers full license to send up a few proverbial fireworks to put an exclamation point on the end of Day One of the festival.

2023 was a tough year for the band, having lost their longtime drummer and co-founder Jeremiah Green. The setlist was a litany of hits, memorializing the kind of medium tempo, snare smashing ballads that Green helped make great.

With about six people on stage, including a pair of percussionists, Modest Mouse delivered a kind of hipster marching band aesthetic that you could sing along to – and many in the crowd did just that.

Another beautiful day of weather. Was the MBTA conspiring against the fest? Sweet Petunia marks the beginning of a lineup with rootsier flavors like Kat Wright, Miko Marks, Trampled By Turtles and headliners Lord Huron.

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