In Which I Spend The Weekend At Brighton Music Hall

As much as I dislike Allston-Brighton, the city's best music venue is there now. At Brighton Music Hall, good sight lines are easy to find, the sound is mixed cleanly, the beer is well priced, the shows are run punctually (which is important for an aging show-goer like me), and they're consistently booking very good indie rock, from stalwarts to up-and-coming bands. I saw one of each last weekend, the Sea and Cake on Saturday and Dum Dum Girls on Sunday, in the midst of what was an unbelievably excellent run of shows last week. (Among others, the Walkmen and A.C. Newman were also in town.)

The crowds were surprisingly sparse, half full at best. I realize that the Sea and Cake are on the downside of their career's popularity, even if they're still making good albums. In fact, the friend who joined me the next night said when I told him of the show, "They're still around? Are they on a reunion tour?" And I realize that Dum Dum Girls played on a Sunday night, right around midterms, in a city where the audience depends on college and graduate students. But the turnouts were still disappointing, confirming why veteran bands don't always stop in Boston on every tour and why hotly tipped ones will always be sure to go to New York but not here when they're on their hype-building debut tour. The depth of interest just isn't the same in Boston. I'm surprised that there aren't more venues in Cambridge targeting the indie rock market, especially now that the Middle East has fallen off the map. More students who like indie rock live there and getting to Allston-Brighton via the Red and Green Lines is always a pain.

Not much bound the Sea and Cake and Dum Dum Girls to each other. As mentioned above, one is nearing the end of its career and the other has the promise of a rising career in front of it. One is a quintessential '90s band -- from Chicago, inclined to write precise compositions, fond of jazz, skilled musicians, and not fashionable. The other is a great band for the moment -- stylized and attractive, with a pastiche of music that dips into the parts of previous decades that they want to borrow. Dum Dum Girls have quickly reached a level of confidence that belies their youthful career, and Sunday's crowd loved it. My favorite part of the two nights was how ably the Sea and Cake's replacement bassist filled in for the band. The parts were remarkably hard, but then again, he's also the bassist for Tortoise, whose songs are even more complex. There were also a few moments when everyone else in the band had to send obvious cues about when he should join or stop playing, which made me laugh hard. Even at that level, rock is still sloppy and fun.

Above is a video of Dum Dum Girls performing "Always Looking" last Sunday.