PLAYGROUND BOSTON

Photos by Pete Legasey

I’ll be honest: I think it’s stupid when a band uses a complete sentence for their name.

I’m not saying it’s rational. I just do. I don’t even like it when they use three quarters of one (Sorry… The Accident That Led Me To The World).

Bands named with a short sentence – like God Lives Underwater and, yes, You Can Be A Wesley – are minor offenders. Still, it’s probably for the best that I first saw YCBAW (is it okay to refer to them as Yak Baw?) play before I knew what they were called. It was at a basement show in Allston in April of last year. I was there to see the Eskalators, a 50-or-so-piece band from Brooklyn that includes my pals Dan and Guia and, despite the name, is not a ska band. Now, at that time, the only band I wanted to hear anywhere was Super Junky Monkey, so I was only half paying attention to the Wesley’s, but they were at least solid enough that I gave them a closer listen on yonder myspace page.

Like any good indie rock group, the early songs of Wesley straddled that line between mopey and uplifting. Tracks like Feed the Moon, Starve the Sun peg that dreamy iridescence of late 80’s Sonic Youth to a tee, while Balloon Head drips with Mates of State sweetness (drummer Dan Goldenberg and bassist Nick Curran maintain a lively pace that keeps it from getting too syrupy). But the song that refused to be ignored was Summerhomes, a cozy, twilight glance out the screen door at a dusty beach road in late July – the sort of thing that New Englanders pine for all winter. Winston Macdonald’s genial slide-guitar and Saara Untracht-Oakner’s honeyed, lullaby vocals are odd relaters for this tale of meteors and missile showers, but it sort of fits with the whole singing-in-the-face-of-death message of the song, which cites Armageddon as a perfect excuse for a vacation.

In the last year, You Can Be A Wesley has sprouted from a BU college band into borderline local phenom status. Glowing reviews in the Digg, the Phoenix and CMJ.com were sandwiched around an east coast tour that gave the band its first taste of the road and nearly killed them… No, like, they literally almost died. Saara explained that they were driving through Virginia in a van named Barbara Gordon (don’t ask) when they lost control about 100 feet away from a tunnel and suddenly poor Barbara went see-sawing up on two wheels as the YCBAW crew screamed for dear life from within.

I dare you to show me a frowning face in this crowd (no use wasting your time - you won't find one).

If you haven’t heard of the Wesleys and think their popularity is a figment of my imagination, then you definitely weren’t there when they sold out the Middle East on Monday (as in, the day of the week when no one goes to shows) with the help of Casper and the Cookies, Everything, Now! and Magic, Magic. The show marked the release of YCBAW’s new album, Heard Like Us, which has seen the band ratchet up the voltage to deliver a higher-proof shot of their smooth blend of jampop.

“It’s more of a rock-centered album than pop,” said Untracht-Oakner at Monday’s gig. “We have some new pedals and new toys to play with that make things a little fuzzier and a little heavier.”

“We started out writing poppy, fun stuff,” added Curran. “We got a little tired of it. We still like it, but we were trying to mix it up a little bit and the new we stuff we started to write sounded more intense.”

The band sited groups like My Bloody Valentine, the Raveonettes and albums like XTC’s Skylarking as some of the driving influences on their new trajectory. The songs on Heard Like Us still have the anthemic hooks of the earlier models, but the added chutzpah has, if nothing else, made YCBAW more accessible to the noise rock crowd and to classic metal dorks like yours truly.

Although most of the packed crowd seemed to be in attendance for an earful of Yak Baw, it would be unfair to the other bands to credit the ecstatic atmosphere of Monday’s show to Wesley alone. In fact, it was already palpable when I arrived some two-plus hours before the Wesley’s took the stage.

I got there right as Magic, Magic was finishing their set, so I apologize for their notable absence from the current note. I wasn’t able to get any real pulse on this band that has generated some real hype across the pond in the UK, but I was able to debunk a widespread myth about them: contrary to what the London Times and the Phoenix have reported, Magic, Magic is not (repeat: not) from Salem, MA. I know this because I went up to them and said something along the lines of, “Hey, I heard you guys are from Salem. I’m from Salem too! You ever hang out at the Record Exchange or Major Magleashe’s Pub?” and felt like a dumbass when they told me that they were all, in fact, from Boston and Dedham.

Kay Stanton (left) and Jason NeSmith of Casper and the Cookies get low.

The first band I got a good look at was Everything, Now!, a quartet from Indianapolis who is on tour with Casper and the Cookies in support of their new album, Spatially Severed. Like the band members themselves, Everything, Now!’s music is hairy, southern and easy to root for. Of all the singers on Monday’s bill, E-Now’s Jon Rogers might have had the most distinctive voice – an earnest, high-pitched yelp, like a burlier Daniel Johnston or Wayne Coyne with the throaty twang of Rocky Erickson. The band’s long, goofy, almost Primus-ian song titles (Save a Life with Diet Chocolate Sprite, The Hairy Ears of Soul Captain Serpentine to name a pair) belie a message that is simple and direct.

“As we’ve grown up, our music has focused less on our personal issues or being disappointed in life and it’s gone in a more positive direction with more religious references,” Rogers explained when asked about Spatially Severed, the band’s fifth album. “Not that we belong to any one religion – we just incorporate all of that into what we do.”

I’ve seen the band’s formula described as “Bowie-by-way-of-T-Rex,” but, to my ears, the E-Now! sound is less glam rock and more Exile­-era Stones deep-fried and served by a big top revival house band whose god is cool with the occasional bong hit or acid tab (the fellas also list Dr. Seuss, Kafka and assorted southern soul acts among their influences). Eric Alexander and Dave Carter trade off on bass and drums, while Rogers plays guitar and Justin Prim – who looks like Matisyahu without the yarmulke – alternates between keyboards and trumpet. The four do an admirable job perpetuating the kind of racket that was once the work of an 8-piece band. All the while, Rogers belts out curative maxims (“If you feel dead inside, you don’t try that suicide / just find the part that’s still alive, watch it grow towards the light” he sings on …Diet Chocolate Sprite) and his bandmates croon the parts that are sung on the record by a full gospel choir (in this, E-Now! had some extra help from about 150 witnesses at Monday’s mass).

Next up was Casper and the Cookies, a trio (since the recent departure of drummer Joe Rowe, anyway) of indie rock veterans from Athens, GA. whose members have appeared in such bands as of Montreal, The Glands and Supercluster. The band has been around since 1999 and is on tour to pimp out their epic (18 songs) fourth album, Modern Silence.

Jim Hix from Casper and the Cookies

Asked to describe the difference between Casper and of Montreal, founder Jason NeSmith joked, “It’s different in that we’re not as popular and I’m not as thin and attractive as [of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes] is. In every other respect, it’s identical,” before adding, “they’re more dance-y than we are. People can shake their asses to our tunes, I think, but we have more power pop in our sound.”

Modern Silence may prove too lengthy and stylistically erratic for some fans to digest (although, if you ask me, cohesion is wayyyy overrated when it comes to rock albums), but at the Middle East, the Cookies packed a jar full of the LP’s best tunes into a spirited, zany and ceaselessly entertaining performance (Rowe’s recorded drum tracks were blared through the PA to make up for his absence). NeSmith jumped back and forth from guitar to keyboards and percussion as the numbers dictated, while Kay Stanton and Jim Hix traded bass and guitar duties and gleefully competed for the audience’s attention.

It made for a close battle, as they are both hard to miss on stage. Stanton is a strawberry blonde stunner in knee-high boots who strikes some of the most convincing power stances you will see from any rocker (male or female). Her attitude, seething from every pore, makes her the perfect frontwoman for songs like Little Lady Larva, an infectious little gem with a verse hook straight out of Sublime’s Caress Me Down laid over a bouncy pop punk beat a la Clampdown by the Clash. Stanton’s fittingly sassy bass line hiccups along with the tune’s preschool-aged heroine as she skins her knees, talks to bugs and worries Mom and Dad with her un-ladylike behavior. Hix, meanwhile, is a stocky but surprisingly twinkle-toed gent whose outfit for Monday’s show consisted of metallic eyelash extensions, a pretty green scarf and a bright orange “I *heart* KY” t-shirt (we can only hope it was referring to the state and not the jelly). I’m not sure what I enjoyed more: his bluesy-woozy guitar licks, his falsetto backup vocals or his merry skipping in place during the band’s dancy-er songs.

Each of the three sang on certain tunes, and their voices were a perfect match for one another (in fact, listening back to Modern Silence, it’s hard to tell which songs are sung by NeSmith and which by Hix). With a bundle of catchy jams like Sid From Central Park (a sunny rejoinder to And Your Bird Can Sing and other mid-60’s Brit pop) and the seamless glam rocker Little King (pretty much what Mr. Speed would sound like if Gene Simmons was replaced with Kim Deal from the Breeders/Pixies), it was unsurprising to learn that the Cookies have been honing their sound for over a decade. With the packed house getting rowdier and more intoxicated by the minute, Casper and Co. were a perfect warm-up for You Can Be A Wesley, and set a high bar for the headliners to reach for when they took the stage shortly after midnight.

Now about those kids with a sentence for their band name…

I've been at shows where people threw drinks, shoes and undergarments at the stage, but T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland?... That's a first.

From the outset, it was clear that You Can Be A Wesley was firing on all cylinders. The group seems quite at home in this heavier shoegaze or fuzz rock (or whatever they want to call it) context. Even the songs I remembered from my first exposure to Wesley seemed bigger and badder. This is not to say that the band has turned into Dragonforce or something (thank god). They’ve just found another gear to shift into. A good example is Wildlife. A pastoral beginning wrought with twigs, bugs and birdsongs is culled from airy guitars and echo-y vocals, as if the whole scene is playing out in the distance from behind an upstairs window. That is, until everything (including the beat) is interrupted by Saara’s command to “wake uuuup.” The window is traversed, and a raucous dance party ensues as Goldenberg breaks into a reggaeton-zydeco hybrid, and Macdonald’s country trills boogie to the forefront.

Already intimate with even the spanking newest of songs, the crowd at the Middle East seized moments like these, dancing, flailing and, occasionally, throwing things at the band – mostly beers, but one fan was curiously moved to lob a copy of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland on stage – and Wesley didn’t even mind the sporadic pelting. In fact, they seemed to get a kick out of it, as if each piece of debris that landed on them was just a good-natured ribbing from a close friend. The whole thing had the feel of a big, drunk family gathering (it kind of was – the band paused early in their set to sing Happy Birthday to one of their parents, who was in attendance). As lively as the dancing and poetry chucking was, I think the fans got the most elation out of the moments where they reared back and let loose with the band on the soaring, battle-cry refrains of songs like Creatures and Stuck In A Battle. Both tunes highlight YCBAW’s knack for taking one lone syllable and violently bending it back or detonating it at precisely the right moment to unleash a spine-tingling hook. Curran’s drive-and-dish alley-oops from the bass line to Goldenberg’s climactic power-slams made the wailing sing-alongs all the more delirious.

Winston MacDonald of You Can Be A Wesley

As for my favorite moment, it came right after the Wesley’s finished what they had announced would be their second-to-last song. With one out remaining (sorry for all the sports jargon), MacDonald asked if anyone in the audience had a lighter he could borrow. Some may have wondered whether the dude was about to spark up a cigarette or pull a Hendrix and sacrifice his telecaster (yeah, yeah, I know – Jimi had a strat). But I knew right away that Winston needed the lighter, not because its constructed to start a flame, but because he needed something with smooth, rounded edges that would fit in the palm of his hand – like a jar or a bottleneck.

The band was closing the show with Summerhomes, and it wasn’t long after the opening bars that the cables and duct tape and fliers and graffiti began melting from the walls of the Middle East. After another moment, the walls themselves were gone and, suddenly, we are all in a very different place. Untracht-Oakner strums out the porch, the sun and a chair to sit in, while MacDonald’s weepy slide impels the action – a gentle breeze, the final drips from the rain gutter in a thunderstorm’s wake, a car driving lazily away with surfboards bungeed on the roof. Central square, Cambridge was many miles away.

Missiles fell like rain, death was inevitable, and the end of the world was no reason to stop the party.

…

You Can Be A Wesley will play at Boston College Central on Sept 11 with Pretty & Nice before hitting the road in support of “Heard Like Us.”

www.myspace.com/youcanbeawesley
www.myspace.com/casperthecookies
www.myspace.com/everythingnow