Big Brave brings the noise at Somergloom on Friday, 23 August 2024.

The heavy bill of heavy music weighs heavily at Arts for the Armory, showcasing Final Gasp, Spiritual Poison, Lesser Glow, Circus Trees, Luci Dead Limb, Mouse Kid and more in the opening slots.

There’s no wrong way to be gloomy.

The booker behind the local live music series Illegally Blind (puts together the Fuzzstival and more), Jason Trefts, is raising money to start a non-profit organization, staffed by brain tumor survivors, “that will provide free short-term care coordination services for people in the Boston, MA area recently diagnosed with a brain tumor.”

The mission of the project hits close to home for Trefts. In his own words, “I was diagnosed with an incurable Astrocytoma at 24 years old. I have spent the decade-plus since navigating chronic disabling conditions while working in the human services field.”

“Astrocytoma” is a type of brain tumor. And while Trefts has been dealing with that, he has also been working in care coordination himself, observing first hand how important the work is. His proposed non-profit would make more of that important work happen for more people. Find out the details and donate at the Still Around Gofundme.

Hump Nights

Nov 30

WORM | Presidential Disgrace | Screw Cart | Neponset Monastary

Dec 3

ONCE Presents: Ezra Furman Doing What She Wants

Dec 4

The Ladybug Transistor / Lightheaded / Mark Robinson (of Cotton Candy)

Dec 7

The Lotusheads / The Dead Flowers / Music Farm / The Pretty Fears

Dec 13

The 4th Wall: Nectarine Girl, Special Guest, Exit 18, Wulfer

Dec 13

Big Ol’ Dirty Bucket / Funk Safari

Dec 14

ONCE Presents: Scream Along Blue Xmas w/ Billy Hough

$Fat Togue Holiday Bash: Give Up!, Love City Dirt, BAD\\VERB$

Dec 16

Fat Togue Holiday Bash: Give Up!, Love City Dirt, BAD\\VERB

Dec 26

Bohemian Rhapsody Sing-Along

Dec 31

Bohemian Rhapsody Sing-Along

Local photog Mouse Kid flashed the musical chops during a DJ set that mixed noise, samples, and samples of noise in the Rooted cafe. Over the course of the two-day Somergloom, the cafe stage was used to accommodate quieter, change-of-pace acts like solo pluckers Kira McSpice and Luci Dead Limb. But the DJ set delivered some good old-fashioned experimental dissonance to the early crowd on Friday night. The ruckus before the storm. Also, is the preferred formatting “:mousekid:”?

The trio out of Marlborough rocks a brand of sadcore that dovetailed nicely with the general gloom. If you caught Circus Trees at their 4th Wall gig back in April, you might have noticed they roll real deep with an auxiliary support team, tweaking lights, sound, and stuff. Presumably friends and family. There was a little of that at Arts at the Armory, but mostly the band just got down to it. When you’re one of the openers on a festival bill, there’s a smaller allowance for pre-performance dithering. The setlist included the powerful “Save Yourself,” which has become a set staple lately.

Another cafe set, with the solo electric guitarist Luci Dead Limb trending into Spanish guitar territory with shades of goth gravitas.

If Mouse Kid was the appetizer, Spiritual Poison was the main course when it came to dissonant DJ sets. As is often the case with DJ sets, there was not much visual poetry in the performance. A man behind a rig, dimly perceived in the darkness. But the sound he produced was satisfactorily monstrous. You’d have to call it experimental because the arcs of the composition were too protracted to accommodate a standard, bite-sized pop sensibility. Noisy, profound, visceral. It was the kind of music that a Hollywood director would fall in love with on the tail end of a weekend bender, commission as the score for their next film, then soberly whittle down to a three-minute background track in one scene – maybe a murder leaving the scene of the crime – in the editing room.

The one question that nobody at Somergloom did not become untired of not asking was, “What is “heavy” music?” Not easy to say what it is, but what it definitely is not, according to nobody that did not untire of not asking, is your standard metal. Having said that, Final Gasp is not not your standard metal. Albeit updated with a few 21st-century kinks. Big guitars playing big solos, big drums, big vox, big vamping. Put them on a local bill with Leather Lung and Barishi for a rollicking night of devil horns. Who cares that “heavy music” is a terminally vague category? As Ralph Waldo Emerson didn’t not say: “A wise inconsistency is not the hobgoblin of not big minds.”

Montreal’s Big Brave is, like, a real headliner. An international touring act whose music captures the faint inklings of what “heavy music” might be according to other artists and synthesizes the material into a monument dedicated to what “heavy music” is and must be for all time. Or at least for the night. A canny mix of improv dissonance, stark jamming, held together by the bubblegum and tape of faint pop structures whistling in the background. Kudos to Somergloom for putting the proper punctuation at the end of the night.