PREVIEW: Porches, Girlpool, Palberta @ Somerville Theatre 10/25

By Jack Beck

Spice up your Thursday night at the Somerville Theatre, where coming this week we have Girlpool, Porches, and Palberta all in the same night. The trio will be about a week into their fall tour of the Northeast when this show arrives, all three coming off fresh releases in 2018.

The Girlpool duo have the most recent release of the three, having dropped two singles earlier this month with “Lucy” and “Where You Sink.” These new tracks show the band making big steps from their 2017 album Powerplant, moving towards a grander, almost shoegazey sound. But even with the anthemic builds and onslaughts of echoing guitars, Girlpool still find a way to keep that comfy intimacy of their early drum-free bedroom pop recordings and get the best of both worlds. Expect lots of reverb, catchy hooks, and rekindled memories of the best friend from kindergarten that you haven’t seen in a decade.

And if you need to dance that nostalgia away, Aaron Maine’s project Porches is just for you. The band is a perfect pair for Girlpool, mixing a similar bedroom pop coziness with fully fleshed-out and sparkling dance rock. The band’s recent music tends to be on the syntheir end of the spectrum then the other two acts here, with their release from earlier this year The House fittingly embracing house-influenced beats behind autotune soaked earworm hooks. They’ve got a real spacey, underwater aesthetic to their sound, the type of thing that would absolutely mesh with Girlpool’s brand of nostalgic, vibey indie rock.

And how does the Boston-native trio Palberta fit in with these two rising indie stars? Absolutely no idea. While they’re newest release Roach Goin’ Down managed to dial back slightly on the abstract excursions into musique concréte and mangled Bee Gees covers, it’s still got that fiercely unpredictable wildness that made their 2017 release Bye Bye Berta my personal favorite of the year. The band’s sound is essentially the antithesis of the mellowed-out indie of Porches and Girlpool, and it’s gonna be kinda wild seeing how it all fits together. Grab your tickets here! The show starts at 8 p.m., Thursday Oct. 25 at the Somerville Theatre.