One If By Land, None If By Lowell
Senseless Optimism at Silhouette LoungeSenseless Optimism release the funk hounds at Silhouette Lounge on Monday, 20 March 2023.
Traders, Dwelley, and Blame It On Whitman sandwich the four-stack bill.
Sound the alarm, Lowell is invading!
Who says you can’t get surprised by cultural hotspots anymore? Not Bill the Bartender! We may all be connected via our dumb phones, but if we don’t know how to read the information we’re receiving through them, we may as well have our heads down and live in a cave.
Here’s what your dumb phone should be telling you: Lowell’s music scene is worth a look. Lucky you, if you live in Boston, because it’s the kind of music scene that knows how to travel. To paraphrase the Roman orator Pericles, all good things flow into the city.
If you’ve been tracking the Listings at Hump Day News (accessible via your dumb phone), you’ve seen a host of dates by Lowell artists dotted across Boston and beyond, including Tysk Tysk Task, Burp, Class President, and on Monday night, Senseless Optimism. Prides of Lowell, every last one of them!
Why should Boston be so lucky? After all, it’s an hour’s commute for any band, plus load-in/out time before they can hit the stage. That’s no gimme. What is it about the Lowell temperament that makes the Lowell-Boston circuit so reliable lately?
No one reason, though consider history and demographics. Lowell clocks in at a population of a little over 100,000, which includes a bunch of college kids at UMASS/Lowell. Sizeable enough to whet your appetite for the cultural perks of big city living, but not big enough to satisfy it.
The city of Lowell offers a host of arts & culture events throughout the year to put its artists on a pedestal. Shout out to the Town and City Festival. Shout out to the new performance space The Overlook, with “views of downtown Lowell.” It’s the kind of city that wants to support its artists. But if you’re a young musician honing your craft, there are never enough stages. Boston is always calling.
Plus, there’s something about the Lowell mentality that makes its artists want to show up and show out. A city cut from working class cloth, dating back to the old textile industry. A city with some fight, with a boxing scene that’s hosted bouts with legends of the sport. A city with a combo of grit and panache.
A Lowell musician that bothered to make the trip to Boston comes with a different mindset than a local gigger that just rolled out of bed and into the club in Allston Ferret City. You can see and hear the difference on stage.
So that’s that. Don’t sleep on Lowell. Next up, Worcester!
Traders
Boston’s Traders self-identify as krautrockers. You can really hear it on their 2019 release SIDES. Especially the lead single “Violence.” The gritpop single mixes an aught’s era insouciance with the straight ahead highway rock of Neu, or Can at their most aggro.
The backroom at Silhouette Lounge is a good space for their type of noise. The three-piece kicked off the four-stack bill with gusto.
Dwelley
DwelleyDwelley is a mix of post punk emoting and artcore grind.
A few of the songs had the well-constructed pop bones of a Jimmy Eat World; a few had the sonorous monotone vocals of Bad Religion; a few flashed a kind of rock n roll melodrama reminiscent of Live; and a few offered the kind of repetitive riff-geometry of SYR-release era Sonic Youth, with some oddball Thelonious Monk notes.
The local four-piece was a jack of all trades and master of none. Which was the true Dwelley?
Maybe there is no true Dwelley. You ever think about that?
Senseless Optimism
Senseless OptimismPride of Lowell Senseless Optimism had more than one fan in the house curious about what kind of sound she would bring to a live show.
Her lead single “Nothin’ To Me,” off 2022’s It Gets Better, is a funky ensemble jammer that sounds like it needs a half dozen musicians to pull off. From the horn section, to the keys, to the guitars, and rhythm section…
How many players can the backroom of Silhouette Lounge accommodate? The place puts the ‘stage’ in ‘postage stamp.’
The woman behind the moniker Brit Tsewole made some sensible edits to the Senseless Optimism lineup, rolling in four deep. Two guitars, bass, and drums made the most of their numbers. The four-piece played like a well-oiled machine, jigsawing genres from jazz, to funk, to rock, to blues and beyond.
Blame It On Whitman
Blame It On WhitmanWhitman takes too much blame altogether.
The Boston-based band lists three members on the Bandcamp page of their 2020 release Everything Is Fine…, but they rolled into the backroom with four players. Two guitars, keys, and drums.
Normally you look at that instrumentation rundown and figure the guitars are leading the way.
Not the case here. The keys player was throwing up palms like the headlining DJ at a four-day house festival in Ibiza. Blame It On Whitman! The band cranked out a mix of electro-charged emo rock to top off the night.
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Trace Mountains outlines summits at Deep Cuts.