Battlemode of the Bands
Battlemode at The JungleLocal hyperweights Battlemode get in the ring at the Jungle on Friday, 26 May 2023.
TIFFY and Edward Glen trade pop blows.
From solo acoustic to shoutrock, Daytime Talkshow and Cheer Up Dusty knuckle up.
Who needs Boston Calling? The Jungle in Somerville’s Union Square had a multi-day festival bill crammed into the confines of a single night.
Who needs Rock n Roll Rumble? These bands were ready to brawl. Five bands, a five-stack, a five-card fight, a musical cage match with something for everyone, plus a bit extra.
The venue that advertises live music every night seemed determined to have all the music on one night. For ten dollars, it’s hard to beat.
Hump Day News is sad to report, however, that the “Lifetime Membership Card” offering has been discontinued at the music club-cum-snackeria. For a one-time cost of ten dollars, the cardholder would enjoy ten dollars off food orders in perpetuity, provided they spent ten dollars on the door cover charge.
RIP Lifetime Membership CardSince the food items don’t get much pricier than $14 or $15 bucks, and go even lower, it’s basically like handing a free plate of food to anyone who was going to pay to see the show anyway. You would have made your money back on the card after a single use.
The bartender on the night of the show was an emergency fill-in who had never heard of the deal. But we submit to you, dear readers, photographic evidence of the deal that once was. The greatest deal in the history of food promotions. An absolute bottomless pit of savings and freebies, dreamt up in a foggy haze of good intentions, that management must have realized was a terrible idea almost immediately.
On the bright side, the bartender confirmed later that the discount deal was still being honored for cardholders. After all, it’s a ‘lifetime’ membership. If you are a cardholder, please contact Hump Day News in the comments and let us know that you can still use your card and what your favorite nosh at the Jungle is.
Daytime Talkshow
Daytime TalkshowA solo acoustic version of Daytime Talkshow is a nice way to warm up a five-band bill.
Too many amplified watts straight out of the gate and the ears go numb by the time you hit the closer. Let the audience scooch its way into a listening mood like a dog that circles around its sleeping pad.
The full lineup of the Somerville-based band runs at least three or four members. Tonight one man on guitar was flying solo. Hump Day News just wrote up a think piece-y live review on a three-stack bill at Midway Cafe that featured solo offshoots of bigger bands. Like it, hate it, or wholly indifferent, it’s a thing.
So which member of Daytime Talkshow was on stage? Not sure. By the way the band used to be called Tall Boys, which is a way better band name, right?
TIFFY
TIFFYTIFFY rides again! The Boston-based pop rockers were back to local gigging after playing the Town and City Festival up in Lowell not too long ago.
The four-piece (five-piece?) fronted by Tiffany Sammy celebrated the arrival of warm weather with a new single “Social Sliding.”
If you check out the front cover for the single you’ll recognize the big, red, 80s chic metalworks sculpture from Porter Square. Right? And photoshopped into one of the structures is a tiny little Sammy, looking like a leftover cutout from the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Hard to miss if you’re looking, but easy to miss if you’re not.
TIFFY brings big walls of guitar sound, tamed like a team of horses to pull pop conceits with turn-of-the-millenium altrock pedigrees. The layers of sound are used to good effect to build glass parapets into the sky. Don’t wait for a wrecking ball to smash through musical architecture. It’s a loud band but they’re not noisy. Was the keys player reading a Hackett edition before the set? Next level cramming, if so. It’s finals season in the NBA and elsewhere.
Edward Glen
Edward GlennnIs it ‘Edward Glen’ or ‘Edward Glenn’? It’s been written both ways, so we’ll just tag both. For what it’s worth there’s only one ‘n’ on the Bandcamp page.
Edward Glen has been gigging around town of late. The band performed as a four-piece, serving up swank pop jammers with shades of solo J Mascis-era Dinosaur Jr. (minus the hellacious soloing). Maybe a little Replacements or Gin Blossoms in the mix as well?
This is a band that will sound as good as the sound system allows. So treat them well, sound tech dudes, and they will treat you well.
Cheer Up Dusty
Cheer Up DustyThe 6-, 7-, 8-deep dehydrated blunderbuss shoutposse Cheer Up Dusty took the stage like a hail of lugnuts.
The Philadelphia band played like a hardcore punk band, but weaved in more melodic guitar sequences between the amp-straddling and crowd-goading.
Did they travel with their own caravan of boosters by the way? Beside the videographer, there were a number of dudes who seemed like they were peeled off the front page of the Camden Daily or the Hoboken Press. It’s a vibe. And it was a nice palate cleanser on a night full of more regimented pop acts.
Battlemode
BattlemodeLocal hyperpop duo Battlemode played the closing slot like headliners. What does that mean? An embrace of magnitude of the moment. Going a little larger than life, with bigger sounds and plenty of arm waving. Honoring the bands that played earlier in the night with a bang-up set that will put an exclamation point on the evening. And it’s also a bit of a practical matter, since one of the pair runs sound at The Jungle, he needed to TCB before the final act.
Battlemode is a mix of hyperpop and danceclub balladry, fed through a b-boys grinder. If you’ve seen them play around town, you’ve seen them plant their flag on bills here and there that have absolutely nothing to do with their sound. And it works like magic!
There are bands out there that need to be surrounded by a bustling beehive of like-minded musicians that genre like their own genre in order to make sense. And hey, nothing wrong with drowning in a sea of your own Kool-Aid. Fully immersive genre experiences like Grub, Sweat, and Beers (metal) or Dark Spring (goth/darkwave) are righteous, affirming community experiences. But there’s a hell of a lot to be said about a band that can roll up on any bill, empty out their lunch pail of sound for 45 minutes, and vanish into the night.
Check out Battlemode’s new single “Die Alone.”
Extra points for the electric flute, or whatever that was onstage. Battlemode can team up with the Muzzins melodica and keytar for a collab single celebrating obscure, underemployed instruments.
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