Comfy wears its garage pop cap at Notch Brewery on Thursday, 4 January 2023.

Really Great and Puppy Problems sandwich the triple-stack bill.

There’s a beer called “Fire Walk With Me” on tap.

The frontman for Comfy asked for how much of the crowd was the Notch Brewery was their first show of the year. [An awkwardly-phrased sentence, if there ever was one. -ed.] More than a few hands popped up. New year, new music.

Can we fix that sentence?

How about:

“The frontman for Comfy asked how many in the audience were seeing their first show of the year.”

Or set it up differently:

“New year, new music. The frontman for Comfy asked the crowd if this was their first show of the year.”

‘Audience’ is kind of boring. ‘Crowd’ might oversell it. How about ‘assembled faithful’? Is that too weird or kind of fun?

“The frontman for Comfy queried the assembled faithful whether this was their first show of the year.”

We’ll save the verb talk for another day.

Puppy Problems

A three-piece with a real lo-fi aesthetic. It’s Puppy Problem! Vocalist and songwriter Sami Martasian led the charge behind six strings of postpunk-damaged, acoustic folk rock. Kind of flat, occasionally absurdist, observational lyrics. The outfit released a cassette tape Winter In Fruitland via Anything Bagel in 2023.

Comfy

The old rule of thumb that the out-of-state act doesn’t play last (if they don’t want to).

Rochester’s Comfy seems to build its sound along two different genre paradigms: first, a more jangly garage rock, and, second, a Korg-powered chiptune vibe.

Thursday’s show in Brighton turned up the garage rock version. Comfy performed as a four-piece, whose set consisted of, according to one member of the band, “literally all of our songs.”

If you dig around on the web, it does seem like the chiptune version of the band has a deeper discography. Most recently, the 25-track, full-length Super Comfy World 2: the Lost Levels, released in 2023.

The next time Comfy rolls through town with their chiptune cap on they should connect with Mobius Trip and Battlemode, who recently played a Sonic Adventure 2 tribute show. It’s a throwback gamer thing.

Really Great

It’s been a while since Hump Day News caught Really Great live in concert. Was the last time at the Nice Festival in 2022? Around the time that the band released its full-length So Far, No Good?

Since then the band has been up to a whole lotta sippin.

Really, a lotta sippin.

A boatload of sippin.

You work up a thirst playing indie rock. The four-piece really cooks when it gets up to speed. Sources report a new album on the horizon.

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