Tonight was my first foray into Crystal Ballroom, the newish space upstairs at the Somerville Theatre and it’s a beautiful venue. The section in front of the stage is a couple steps down from the rest of the room so even with a sold-out show like tonight, good sightlines are generally available throughout the room and the sound was excellent. Boy Harsher’s second date on this tour landed a bit close to their adopted hometown of Northampton and tonight the duo cranked out a highly enjoyable set of throbbing electro-dance music.
The fog machine was working overtime to bathe Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller in wide swaths of smoke, the backlighting cutting through occasionally. Their newest record, The Runner, is the soundtrack to a short horror film that they wrote and produced and the set led off with two of the songs.
The crowd was a solid mix of folks who either were frequent denizens of Man Ray or Ground Zero, or were born well after both of those Cambridge clubs shuttered for good. They were rewarded with an encore that featured a cover of Chris Isaak’s reverb-soaked “Wicked Game,” and of course their banger “Pain” closed out the evening.
Openers Twin Tribes had that early Cure sound down tighter than a pair of too-small latex trousers, even down to the very British accent on the vocals. I don’t think the locals talk like that where they are from in Texas but I could be mistaken.
Primarily based in Boston, Massachusetts, Tim Bugbee is no stranger to traveling throughout the country or overseas to capture the best live music photos.
