Heartbreaking Bravery

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Tag: Gay Sin

July 13, 2016

LVL UP – Pain (Stream, Live Video)

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Over the course of the day, a whole host of great material has found its way out into the greater world. Included in this wealth of worthy new releases included streams from Steve Adamyk Band, Slow Down Molasses, Happy Diving, Buildings, Beach Slang, PJ Harvey, Flock of Dimes, Itsaca, The Holy Circle, Bodies Be Rivers, The Moles, and a Littler cover of a Muffs classic with all of the proceeds of the cover going to Campaign Zero. Additionally, there were exceptional full streams from the following: Gay Sin, Heliotropes, Blue Smiley, and Pure Disgust. Finally, the music video format saw excellent new entries from the likes of Sneeze, Honeyblood, Sleeping Beauties, and Hinds.

Really, though, ever since Sub Pop’s announcement of their newest acquisition, this day has all but belonged to LVL UP. The band’s been working on their full-length follow-up to Hoodwink’d — this site’s pick for 2014’s Album of the Year — steadily for well over a year. Today, they unveiled the first track to be heard from that record, which will be titled Return to Love, with the perpetually shifting “Pain”.

Easily one of the finest songs Mike Caridi has contributed to the band to date (which is no mean feat), “Pain” is simultaneously one of the band’s most ambitious and arresting songs, demonstrating the breadth of their expanded scope in one fell swoop. Opening with a melancholic ambient swirl, “Pain” quickly ups the tempo and quickly begins presenting scathing, intimate questions like “where is the one who loved you, unconditionally?” and never lets down the intensity for a moment.

Ultimately, the song settles into the self-defeating mantra of “Never Find Love” before a volcanic eruption of feedback, distortion, and noise subsumes the song and quickly transforms it into a seething maelstrom of formidable power, reaching a level of darkness of which their most recent release — the excellent Three Songs EP — hinted towards. The quartet really lays into that final section during their sets (“Pain” has been a live staple for some time) and tap into some intangible quality that seems to elevate them as a unit, locking into some sort of terrifying trance and playing off of each other with startling precision.

“Pain”, likely more than most of their recent songs, pays homage to the band’s past while remaining determined to look towards the future. In striking that balance, LVL UP has managed to produce a song that does more than justify their Sub Pop signing, set up Return to Love‘s release, and remind people of why they came to be such a force. It becomes a transportive experience that nears moments of transcendence.  Should the rest of Return to Love live up to the standard set by its first single, the band may find themselves following up a miniature masterpiece (Hoodwink’d) with the real thing.

Listen to “Pain” below (and watch a slightly blown-out video of the band running through an earlier version of the song last year at Palisades below the embed) and pre-order Return to Love from Sub Pop here.

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February 15, 2016

2015: A Year’s Worth of Memories (Christine Varriale)

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Back in 2014, Christine Varriale (pictured above, center) and I spent a week exploring the city of Toronto and taking in as many NXNE shows that we possibly could. Since then, she’s introduced me to a number of my favorite people (including her Puppy Problems bandmate and fellow A Year’s Worth of Memories contributor Sami Martasian, who she also writes with over at Allston Pudding). Varriale also plays in a band called Gay Sin and remains a fixture of Boston’s constantly thriving music scene. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise then, that she chooses to turn her eyes towards the city for her second A Year’s Worth of Memories piece. Here, she deals with Krill’s loss, the city’s malleability, and expectantly turns towards the future. Read those thoughts below and remember that defeat can give way to hope.

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It’s February 5th, and I’m on a train to NYC from Boston, not on a mission for my usual trip to NYC for CMJ. It’s a weird feeling but a great environment to observe my beloved Boston music scene in 2015 from afar both physically and temporally.

Boston is inherently a cyclical city. Many young people move to Boston for college and then leave shortly after to spread their roots in a new city. I’ve never been much for change, so I’ve stayed in Massachusetts my whole life. Sometimes I wonder if this is good or bad, but there’s a piece of me in Boston that I can’t cut out. My roots are too deep.

But back to that cycle thing: Boston’s basement scene is ever-changing. There are staple houses that survive years like Thieves Grotto and Whitehaus, but then there are some that fade away like Butcher Shoppe, The Womb and Gay Gardens. We look back at lost venues fondly, but we do not cry for them. Something new is always beginning like Milhaus, Grandma’s House and The ER. New residents start their own pockets of the scene whether it’s BU bros, Berklee punks or our resident show moms.

And much like the houses, many of the bands cycle through too. We lost our heroes Krill in 2015, and soon we will lose other bands to new cities. More tears should be wept away, because our bumbling music scene is now scattered across this country. With the demise of these staples in our scene, younger bands are forming to take their place in quasi-homage. Bands like Du Vide, Horse Jumper of Love, and Stumpf are our new Krill. Palehound, Lady Pills, Ursula, and Gravel are our new Speedy Ortiz. Some of us stay like Pile, Fat History Month, Kal Marks, and Big Buck Hunter.

How will 2016 spread its branches? Will these bands move or will they thrive within the Boston community to become the next Pile or Krill? It’s always a toss up here, but I can’t wait to see how this year plays out.

-Christine Varriale

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