Mercy Ruin ruins mercy at the Silhouette Lounge on Monday, 15 January 2024.

Black Beach and Will Tell Aim open the triple-stack bill.

What goes on behind the black curtain, stays behind the black curtain.

Nah, just kidding. You can hear the bands playing in the back room at the Silhouette Lounge pretty well from the front room.

But all the fun in hearing music live is seeing music live. As everyone at the sold out show last Monday night would agree.

How many bodies with clothes with pockets with wallets with $10 does it take to sell out the backroom at the Sil? 20, 30, 40, 50? The world may never know.

It’s nice to have a space the right size for the right show. A three-stack bill of local DIY bands can feel a little drafty in an oversized room, for example. You don’t want to book a lineup of Battlemode, Your Friends In Hell, and Cape Crush at Gillette Stadium. You don’t want to book Taylor Swift at the Middle East club, you want to book her at the literal Middle East (playing private birthday parties for oil princes is the next phase of her career, just you watch).

So the first thing to do is book the right size event for the right size venue. Failing that, clubs and concert halls have different tricks for making the space morph into the correct proportions, mood, vibe for whatever acts are playing.

Rumor has it that Deep Cuts did a little recent renovation to make its performance area feel a bit tighter. More than a rumor. A door here, a curtain there, and voila! You’ve got two spaces instead of one: a bar/restaurant area and performance area. If you just want to roll through for a drink or a bite on a show night, you can do that without paying the cover. But if you like what you hear, you can pay a little extra to see what’s behind the curtain.

A black curtain, of course.

Will Tell Aim

Ambient electronica coming out of the back of the Sil? It’s Cambridge’s Will Tell Aim.

Not the type of music that regularly gets booked for the venue, but it sounded great. You can swill tallboys on top of electro too.

The solo artist sings on top of the beats, so if you’re born scared of pure techno instrumentals, you at least have that handrail to hold onto.

Looks like he’s got an EP called Faceplant that came out at the end of 2023.

Black Beach

Black Beach rides again! Haven’t seen the brass horn in the mix since the first BB show we covered in 2022 on Day 4 of the Nice Festival. Maybe we’re just not looking hard enough. The artcore trio churns out stripped down guitar rock for our present dystopia. Shades of FACS and riot police.

Mercy Ruin

Pop punk fed through the Cure meat grinder. It’s Mercy Ruin. Their first EP Worship emphasizes the darkwave atmospherics: reverb, plaintive cries, walls of synth haze. In live performance, though, the band cuts through some of the fog for a bit more old school, meat and potatoes emo sound. That’s what they sound like. Who knows what they look like – the backroom at the Sil was packed, and only the nimble, persistent, and patient found their way to the front.

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