Next Stop, Finals

Gut Health tops the bunch to win a Finals berth at Sonia on Saturday, 20 April 2024.

Wire Lines, Twig, and CE Skidmore and the Damn Fine Band play their last note at this year’s Rock N Roll Rumble.

Anngelle Wood of Boston Emissions puts on her emcee hat, emcee jacket, and emcee boots.

This is it. Push all the chips into the center of the table as each band left makes the big bet on themselves to win it all at the Rock N Roll Rumble Finals at Sonia on Saturday. Time to lay all your cards on the table.

If it feels like a little extra time has passed since we last covered the Rumble, it has. There were two weeks between the Semis and upcoming Finals, in contrast to one week between the Prelims and Semis. Kind of like the Superbowl, which comes two weeks after the end of the week-to-week NFL playoff matches.

What do the remaining bands – Gut Health, The Ghouls, and Other Brother Darryl – do with that extra time?

Maybe you do nothing. That is, “nothing.” Just take a deep breath and reconnect with the rest of your life. It takes a lot of time and energy to run around town trying to make weekly gigs, while presumably working all your regular hours at the day job. Between weekly gigging and trying to pay the rent, most of your free time is spoken for. It’s good to take an extra week, reclaim a little bit of your life, and not worry about promoting the next gig for at least seven days or so.

Come back refueled, refreshed, and ready to rock. Or at least that’s the theory.

Let’s rock! The Finals are May 4 at Sonia…

CE Skidmore

and the Damn Fine Band

Alt Americana out of CE Skidmore and the Damn Fine Band. Was the band feeling any pressure facing the last hurdle between them and breaking through to the Finals?

Maybe. One of the guitarists was onstage early, well before the set, silently running through chord progressions in the dark. It was a quiet moment of zen, but hinted at a creeping anxiety.

Even bands used to performing are not necessarily used to competing. Why would they be?

And it’s a weird crowd for the Rumble, full of judges, and old heads, and people who have capital ‘O’ opinions about music. Or maybe that’s what the guy does before every set?

Twig

The four-piece hard rockers Twig made short work of the competition in the Preliminary Round. They pulled a few tricks out to turn up the heat in the Semis, like a guitar solo played with a violin bow. Strong Nigel Tufnel vibes. And was that a Ukraine flag waving in the middle of the set or was I seeing things?

Wire Lines

Wire Lines and Gut Health back-to-back is a lot of energy in the back half of the bill. The frontman for the New Bedford band is a whirlwind of controlled chaos, on- and offstage. The rest of the band puts in the work, but at the end of the night they’re just doing what the rest of the room is doing: wondering what part of the room the frontman is going to carpetbomb next. Uptempo punk, A+ for delivery.

Gut Health

Post punk psych commandos Gut Health have a stable of antics to keep the crowd engaged. If you saw them in the Prelims or Semis, you’ve got a sense for how the set unfolds. No spoilers here, see them for yourself in the Finals. The only question is whether they’ll do what Other Brother Darryl hinted at the other day – switch it up in the final round, throw the judges an unexpected curveball via setlist, or antics, or both? Or do you just steer the ship straight and true into port, win or lose? Time will tell.

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