Geskle wishes you a happy birthday at Crystal Ballroom on Friday, 5 January 2023.

Paper Lady and Trophy Wife prepare for snow in the opening slots.

Digital Awareness in the house.

It’s a good thing for Geskle that the Worcester-based band rolled through Crystal Ballroom in Davis Square at the start of the weekend because by Sunday the “Paris of the ‘90s” was flooded with snow.

Not a crazy blizzard, but a heavy and sustained accumulation. Not the kind of weather you want to navigate on I-90.

Where did you spend your snowy Sunday?

If you work weekends, you probably thought the storm was a fuss over nothing during your commute. Small flakes, wet snow, soil not yet frozen. Cities and towns drop so much salt on the roadways that the snowflakes burst into flames as soon as they touch the asphalt.

By mid-afternoon, though, the consecutive hours of snowfall were making a dent. The snow started to stick on driveways, lawns, and sidewalks. If you’re a Monday-Friday car commuting type, you’re out there shoveling.

Enjoy the wintry aesthetic while you can. The forecast calls for temperatures in the 40s and 50s by midweek. You can wait and watch the snow melt if you want to skip the shoveling.

Can anyone remember the last time the Boston area experienced a seriously snowy winter? It wasn’t that long ago: the 2014/15 winter season was a snow record-breaker. Thanks, Wikipedia!

Too much snow, too little snow. Never just the right amount.

Trophy Wife

Trophy Wife performed a vocals-forward set of dream pop punctuated by grunge digressions.

The group performed as a four-piece Friday night, though if you sift through past releases the ensemble seems to shift between three and four members.

McKenzie Iazzetta is the glue that holds all the different combinations together. Her powerful vocals and chord progressions formed the throughline for most of the songs.

One or more members of the band followed the breadcrumb trail from Allston to Brooklyn. So a band that describes itself as “a staple of the Boston DIY scene” is now drinking from the Empire State cup. The descriptor feels right though for a certain moment. There was a time when it seemed like you could find a local listing for a Trophy Wife show every other day of the week.

Googling old show listings is complicated by a second Trophy Wife band from Oxford, UK, that disbanded in 2013. “Ambitionless office disco,” eh? A very different sounding band from a time before people had heard of Covid-19.

Paper Lady

It was a night for powerful vocals. Paper Lady followed up the opener with a set that pivoted on the voice of Alli Raina.

With five musicians, consisting of the standard rock n roll quartet plus keys, there were plenty of hands at work exploring heavy, tremulous, gazey sounds.

When the focus shifted back to Raina’s vocals, the songs picked up intensity like a lunar module whipping around the moon on a tight orbit and getting spit out on the dark side.

The band performed new track “Silt,” off a forthcoming album.

Banner news for Paper Lady lately, which got nominated for Alt/Indie Artist of the Year. No doubt, in part due to positive response to their 2023 EP Traveling Exploding Star. And did you catch them on the second day of Fuzzstival in September?

Geskle

It felt like a family affair for headliner Geskle.

The Worcester band brought plenty of loved ones and well-wishers from Wormtown. There was even a “Happy Birthday” song for the father of one of the musicians – the bassist? Good vibes aplenty with a backyard barbecue kind of flair.

The four-piece grew out of a musical project started by guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Jesse Golliher. Alt, indie, Americana, a penchant for pop that operates through atmosphere rather than hooks. He’s got a little bit of that “pre-disgraced” Ryan Adams mojo to him.

If you’ve been surfing Geskle’s online music offerings, you probably ran across the indie rock single “New York,” which figured as part of the setlist at the Crystal Ballroom. A ballad of love & loss on the NYC-Worcester circuit.

It was a cover of Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song),” though, that really got the oldheads going.

Photo Gallery