Notes from a Genius

Living in the northernmost, east coast state has its benefits when it comes to music, bands, and touring, because they often choose to start in Maine (or Boston, for a larger market)- or end their tour and there's something to be said for the last night of a tour, the culmination of feelings, putting on their effort into that last show, but if I had to pick, I would definitely say the start of a tour is better, because you get to witness many live debuts of new songs, see the band work out kinks, develop chemistry together as a band and leanr to play off each other, what songs work well, etc. . I've been lucky enough to catch the opening night of several tours from great bands (re: Circa Survive to name one). This past Monday, I won free tickets to The War on Drugs here at the State Theatre. I had honestly forgot that I'd entered the contest, so I was pleasantly surprised and happy to go. I had listened to their new album and was not necessarily blown away by it at first,...

I first saw In the Valley Below a few years ago when they opened for The Airborne Toxic Event at the House of Blues. I had not heard much from them after that, so when I saw that they were headlining a show at a much smaller venue (re: Brighton Music Hall), I definitely wanted to check them out. Their "new" stuff is far more electronic-based than I remembered their first show being, but they certainly mixed it up, including an interesting female-vocalized version of Danzig's "Mother" (which was a song I used to listen to on repeat when I was a kid). The duo, who are seemingly in a relationship based on the chemistry and physical-ness of the female singer on the guitarist, definitely know how to play to a crowd that's there for them (finally), although they sure looked tired/exhausted since this was the last show of their tour. They even played a couple of songs, acoustic, down in the crowd. A small band named Flagship opened for them and sort of...