Sons Lunaris graced Midway Cafe at the tail end of a double-stacked bill on Friday, 16 September. The front end of the night featured the weekly Hippie Hour with the Mystical Misfits. As the hippies filed out, the band moved a human-sized gong onstage and wired the room for a liquid projection lightshow. A few ‘heads liked what they saw in the works and stuck around for the late show. Boston’s Lurid Purple Flowers played in support.

Lurid Purple Flowers

The gong remained sheathed in a bulky black cloth coverlet for Lurid Purple Flowers’ opening set. The Boston-based trio are a hard-charging roadhouse crew that plays medium tempo, blues-based psych rock with some funk undertones. The set list was a mix of originals and covers, including Nirvana’s “Aneurysm.” Guitarist CA Newcomb peppers a little Koko Taylor into her vocals. Lurid Purple Flowers crafts the kind of muscular, guitar-driven powerrock that glories in the hooks, and licks, and riffs, and tricks of the genre with few apologies. Shades of Fang Island, minus the synth.

The previously-wired light show kicked into gear for the Sons Lunaris set, like someone had just flicked a switch in Timothy Leary’s rumpus room.

The rig consists of twin projectors that channel light beams through rotating glass lenses containing a fine mixture of oil and water to cast rainbows around the room.

It’s the same effect you might notice in rancid pools of liquid in the parking lot of your local gas station, except weaponized with machinery to terrorize and delight the minds of the lifted. With the room properly saturated in psychedelic moonbeams, Sons Lunaris unsheathed the gong.

The gong was a massive thing with a broad base to support its weight and prevent the contraption from tipping over when struck. In order to accommodate its girth, the drumset shifted front and center, cusping the lip of the stage.

It was a percussion-forward look, which dovetailed nicely with the band’s percussion-forward sound. The crowd bristled in anticipation. A gong at a workaday music joint like Midway Cafe is like a gun in the first act of a Chekhov play. Someone better get bloody murdered by that gong before the night’s over, or else we’re all going home unhappy.

Sons Lunaris is a trio (or quartet, if you count the gong) that employs the classic, Creamy combo of guitar, bass, and drums. The band, ex-Lowell, is committed to “recreating the live multi-sensory experiences of the late 1960s/early 1970s.” You see it in the lightshow, vibe on it in the bellbottoms, smell it in the pot wafting in from the street corner, and hear it in the heavy psych stylings of their sound.

As with LPF, Sons Lunaris mixed originals with covers, including a heavy, jammy version of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” The band shows good range in their sound and is able to find nice softer psych improvisational moments. Not every song needs to peak Mt. Tripping Balls. Shout out to the intense drum solo in the middle of the set. Percussionist Jeremy Thorpe shed the sticks at one point and was madly tapping the skins with his bare palms. It sounded great, but needed more gong.