What a Long Strange Creep It’s Been

Virginia Creeper rubs elbows with coastal elites at the Lilypad on Sunday, 25 June 2023.

Stace Brandt and Jane Don’t sandwich the triple-stack bill.

Study: Overzealous videographers are the leading cause of cancer.

Ok, not such a long strange creep. Austin’s Virginia Creeper is only on the third show of its quick jaunt through the northeast. But that’s long enough for the laundry bag to start smelling.

Will the goose’s bonnet make it all the way to Alabama, or will it get swiped somewhere along the Providence, Brooklyn, Philly stretch? Time will tell.

By the way, which band did the demented, pony-tailed videographer come with? The guy was out of his mind. Haven’t seen a dude so deeply embedded into his own coverage since Robert Downey Jr.’s character documented the prison riot (from inside the prison) in Natural Born Killers. He was wearing a Speakerhug t-shirt, so I guess he’s local?

No one took a single photo all night that didn’t include the videographer’s ass or elbow. No doubt he got his coverage, but there’s something to be said for finding the right angle before the show, posting up, and just letting the coverage happen. No need to bounce around like a viral chimp from 28 Days.

Chalk it up with some other recent local shows with an oppressive amount of videography. The Rum Bar Records showcase (“Let’s Get Ready to Rum Baaaar!”) at the Silhouette Lounge. The multi-media explosion at State Park Bar.

Come to think of it, Speakerhug was playing the State Park show… Is there a connection there?

Basic rule of thumb for photogs at shows: don’t draw more attention to yourself than the performers on stage.

Stace Brandt

Boston’s Stace Brandt performed as your classic trio of guitar, bass, and drums. It was a singer-songwriter vibe, with the rhythm section laying down just enough padding to free up Brandt to wax melodic.

Maybe it was the Velvet Underground playing on the house mix all night (“Venus In Furs” played at least three times), but there was a driving hypnotic guitar thrum to a few of the songs that the trio rode to a few stirring peaks like the NYC band of old.

Mix that minimal grit vibe in with the more rococo pop turns of, say, the Dead Gowns, and you’ve got a sense of the set.

Virginia Creeper

Speaking of shiny boots of leather, here comes Virginia Creeper. It’s an indie rock five-piece from Austin, Texas, composed of the usual rock n roll quartet plus a musician on keys. Except on Sunday night the fingersmith got to make use of the in-house piano at the Lilypad, a gorgeous specimen with ivory keys that sound like falling rain.

It’s the in-house instrument, right? No struggling indie band has toured with a piano since before Ben Folds Five broke.

There was also a goose prop wearing a homemade bonnet, which seemed to be a kind of spirit animal for the band.

There’s no geography bias in observing that Virginia Creeper’s sound has a lush southern rock vibe. It’s just true. Not in a Guitar Hero Allman Brothers kind of way. More like a reconstructed country western twang that textures the instrumentation and arrangements. And the slow-to-medium tempo was the exact sort of pace at which you want to tackle a hot day in Texas.

Jane Don’t

Or does they…?

The local four-piece Jane Don’t, formerly known as Jane Doe, rounded out the night with some sweet originals, a little improv, and a Beatles cover of “Don’t Let Me Down.”

Looks like you can connect the dots between the drumming for Jane Don’t, the drumming for Christian Pace, and the frontman for Champagne Charlie. Same dude. And the man at the keys for the night performs with Clamb.

Clambaigne Charlie? Which lends more credence to the theory that there are, in fact, only seven or eight actual bands in Boston and a ton of musical chairing.