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

By Jack Beck

I’m trying to get through all of the tragedies Shakespeare wrote before the end of the semester and right now I’m on Titus Andronicus, one of his first plays. It’s known for having by far the highest body count of any of his works, the play’s traditional Shakespearean scenes in the ancient Roman court offset by graphic depictions of bloody murders, cut-off limbs, and brutal decapitations.

And while that might seem completely unrelated to anything you’d find on WTBU’s website, the mix of ornate Roman glory with obscene violence actually comes pretty close to describing the experience of seeing a rock concert at the Somerville Theatre, where Palberta, Porches, and Girlpool performed Oct. 25.

In short, Somerville Theatre is a really weird venue to see a band like the opener Palberta in. If you haven’t heard their stuff, the trio consists of Lily Konigsberg, Ani Ivry-Block, and Nina Ryser and their whole sound is built around these short minute long bursts of really frantic, jittery punk; think a looser Minutemen where all three members swap instruments every other song. It’s the type of thing that sounds best huddled against the stage and thrashing in a mob, not sitting in Somerville’s cushioned seats and attempting to follow the fidgety beat with polite head-bobs.

Still, their performance was great. Even though the live show was missing some of the wonderful weirdness of their studio material with its lack of wild tape experiments or acoustic freakouts, their on-stage presence absolutely holds the off-kilter excitement of their albums. Their choppy, shotgun approach to songwriting leads to this onslaught of feverish rhythms and feedback, and it’s exactly how you’d want them to sound after hearing something off an album of theirs.

Porches were up next. It’s easy to forget it when listening to their newest albums like The House or Pool, but these guys are a rock band. Even though their last albums have leaned heavily on housey synths and a really personal look into frontman Aaron Maine, their live show has a pretty standard four-piece rock band set up with the addition of a synth player, the only anomaly occurring when the bassist swaps her guitar for a second synth.

It leads to the group seeming much more electrified then on their albums, their signature subdued coolness traded in for a more white-knuckle dance-rock feel. Maine completely forgoes the introspectiveness of their records, dancing across the stage and belting out lyrics like a karaoke star. To fall back on Shakespeare, Porches on album is a reflective, meditative Hamlet while the live show leans more towards a harsher, rough-edged Macbeth. It’s worth noting that Porches were the only group of the night that managed to get the entire crowd on their feet, even getting a small mass of people dancing at the edge of the stage.

From there, Girlpool closed out the night. Their blend of sentimental, impassioned indie emo was a slight comedown from the dance party antics of Porches, but the band still managed to put on the tightest set of the night. Despite being a relatively new group with their first album of full-band material Powerplant coming out last year, they played like seasoned veterans. The emotion and honesty of their albums translates to the stage, especially when they strip their lineup down to just singers Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad and play the sweet twee of their earlier albums.

Something that really stood out to me was this interesting tick frontman Cleo Tucker has on the band’s slower tracks. When they swing they square up right into the microphone with a really aggressive look on their face and then pushes around with their chest; it seems more like they’re trying to start a fight than anything else. And while that may seem minor and is admitally super difficult to translate into words, there’s an intensity and honesty in the gesture that captures the overall feeling of Girlpool’s show better than I could any other way.

Sure, the full-band songs blended together a little and Porches might have felt more like the stars of the night, but when Girlpool closed out the show with a heartwarming, wholesome encore of a quick folksy duet between Tucker and Tividad, it seemed like the perfect way to end the night.