Ahhh... the good old days of Boston. The days when you could stroll down to the Rat and see a full slate of bands, each with their own team colors, play noisy post-rock anthems deep into the Kenmore Square night.
Too bad I wasn't there. By the time I got to Boston the Rathskellar was long gone and Kenmore Square was undergoing its own miniDisneyfication into Main Street, USA at the hands of developers gone starry-eyed on the fumes of appreciating real estate. Galaxie 500 had bifurcated into Luna and Damon & Naomi (whom you sometimes see around, hi guys!). Mission of Burma (who have since reformed)had flamed out and one of its members was a public television producer. Dinosaur, Jr. had gotten fat, old, and deaf and spun into oblivion. The Pixies were about to get back together (via fax machine, I suppose?) to cash in on their legacy. Fort Apache studios, long the haven and home to whatever the Boston Sound was supposed to be, packed up and moved to a rural river town in Vermont. Boston still has a scene, but most of the bands that come out of it fail to move me like a hometown band should.
But now there's the Beatings coming across my radar. Produced by Paul Q. Kolderie and engineered by Boston stalwart Tim Shea (of The Black Helicopters), the Beatings have a new five-song EP, If Not Now, Then When? that does move me, right down to the bottom of my aging, curmudgeonly, candy apple grey heart.
It is not damning with faint praise to say that the Beatings remind me of Mission of Burma; only rarely can a band pursue Burma's post-punk ideal of brittle soundscapes replete with feedback, scratchy guitars, and dry vocals and have it sound any good; usually such bands just sound like they're ripping off Burma with a little Pixies on the side. But the Beatings have managed the rare trick of appropriating some of the astringent, hyperintelligent sound invented by Mission of Burma but making it sound human, intimate, and alive in a way that Burma never could.
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