Vivid Bloom closes out Day One of the Snow Gaze benefit at Deep Cuts on Friday, 13 December 2024.

Slow Quit, Main Era, and Still Life Sounds own a lot of guitar pedals in the opening slots.

Zumix and Warm Up Boston in the house.

Once upon a time Still Life Sounds didn’t have the vocalist they do now. Hump Day News covered at least one show at O’Brien’s Pub in the former formation. Big sounds, big textures, big guitars, and the vocals were an afterthought.

But that gig seems like a distant memory since the addition of a (relatively) new vocalist that has given the band a decisively different sound. More pop, but don’t get it twisted, the rest of the band still specializes in producing walls of sound that come at you like a fast-moving tsunami.

Another possibility: the current lead vocalist was just out sick for that O’Brien’s gig, and the band always was what it is?

This band sounds different every time I hear them live.

Long removed from the saccharine “Clandestine Sadness,” moving into dark, doomier, noisier territory since. It’s like they’re spinning through different micro genres, trying to find a comfortable perch. But of course you always find out that there is no such thing as a comfortable perch in life, and once you realize it as an artist, you’ve either found something resembling your creative identity, or you're out of the game entirely.

A longtime booker and promoter in the area said to me they think Main Era is one of the best bands in Boston right now.

Slow Quit on its grind is a beautiful songwriting combination of heavy textures and propulsive architecture. There’s nuance in the gaze haze that never loses track of the meaty bottom end, the rhythm section, which keeps the train chugging along.

Vivid Bloom self identifies as “dream pop,” among other designations, but this set wailed loud and hard. When you’re on a fourstack bill of shoegaze, there’s probably a little bit of “keeping up with the Joneses” in the noise department.

You can check out their EP Out of Focus for recorded and reviewable evidence of Vivid Bloom using a softer touch.

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