Flowers For The Dead with High, Bubbler & World Record @ Bogus Gallery
Greg Freeman thrives on finding emotional catharsis and present-day resonance in the eccentric ugliness of the past. His songs all have a palpable sense of place thanks to his urgent delivery and evocative lyricism, which mines history for character-driven tales of violence, loss, and epiphany. On his sophomore LP Burnover, out August 22 via Canvasback Music/Transgressive Records, the Maryland-born, Burlington, Vermont-based artist uses the complicated backdrop of the Northeast to sing of grief, alienation, and the clarity that comes from opening up yourself to love. Explosive, unsettling, and undeniable, the 10 tracks here meld energetic indie rock with an ambling twang. It’s Freeman’s most adventurous and personal yet, cementing him as a singular songwriting talent.
When Freeman quietly released his debut LP I Looked Out in 2022, it had no PR campaign, label, or music industry promo, but still received raves from Stereogum and Uproxx. The word-of-mouth success of that release had Freeman on a relentless tour schedule. An itinerant lifestyle from ceaseless long drives made him think about home and his role in it. “I was trying to make an album about where I live, without specifically writing about myself and my immediate surroundings,” says Freeman. Driving around Vermont, he’d pass by the birthplaces of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War figure and state icon. “I was drawn to these slightly tragic regional figures who helped me understand the culture of that area even today,” he says.
Burnover borrows its title from "The Burned-Over District," a term used to describe parts of central and western New York that became hotbeds of fervent religious revival and utopian communities during the early 19th century. “There was this period where there’s all this psychedelic, religious movement coinciding with the territorial expansion,” says Freeman, citing Jack Kelly’s Heaven’s Ditch as well as Louise Glück, Grace Paley, Jim Thompson and Emily Dickinson’s writings as inspirations. On the album, there’s a sense that danger or revelation lurks behind every corner. It opens with the foreboding “Point and Shoot,” where he sings, “But I was lost like a little child / In a wilderness where the West was way too wild.” It’s a livewire track, with tangible momentum and an expansive arrangement.
When Freeman was touring I Looked Out, he revamped his live setup as a five-piece where he was the only guitar player. He took that mindset to Burnover, which he recorded with Benny Yurco, drummer Zack James (Dari Bay, Robber Robber) and Freeman’s live band, at Benny Yurco’s Little Jamaica Recordings in Burlington. “I wanted to write songs that were fun and challenging to play on guitar, and maybe had a little more movement,” he says. Songs like “Gone (Can Mean a Lot of Things)” burst with intensity and Freeman’s guitars envelop the track with crunch and winding leads. But Burnover shines when Freeman tweaks the formula, like on “Curtain.” Originally demoed as a meandering guitar jam, the track came to life when pianist Sam Atallah tracked a tack-piano take at the studio. His lively leads invigorate the song, especially as Freeman sings lines like, “My thoughts die out slowly on the blood swept plains where I see you every night / And to the lonely hours, it’s like burning the furniture to keep the house bright at night.” Freeman says, “As soon as Sam laid down the piano, we heard the song for what it was and it came alive.”
For all its propulsive, noisy power, Burnover, which is produced by Yurco and Freeman, and mixed by Adrian Olsen, is immensely inviting and often beautiful. Take the heartfelt and woozy “Gallic Shrug.” A deceptively simple and low-key track that evokes Paul Westerberg at his most earnest, Freeman sings, “You're looking to the sky for love and all you get is a Gallic Shrug.” The complicated people who live in these songs are all searchers, grasping to understand a landscape that no longer makes sense and was never theirs in the first place. (In “Gone,” he sings, “Down in Rensselaer, nothing’s quite clear / You can cross the plane, but gone can mean a lot of things.”) On the booming “Salesman,” which boasts horns from Cam Gilmour, Freeman sings, “Light spent your life wrapping all around you / And always finding your form / And now it drifts like some - blind drunk salesmen / Looking for you door to door.” With wailing pedal steel from Ben Rodgers and pristine harmonies from Lily Seabird, the track reaches a hair-raising crescendo broadcasting the kinetic force of Freeman’s touring band.
Though Burnover is an album about feeling like an outsider and grappling with American myths to create or uncreate a sense of self, it also reflects Freeman’s firm community in his adopted home in Vermont. “I had a choice whether to make this record in Burlington or do it somewhere else,” he says. “I wanted my friends to play on it so the decision was obvious.” He ended up with a collection of songs that burst at the seams with raw immediacy and spark. “With this album, I really just wanted there to be as many things to hold onto as you can,” he says.
Racing Mount Pleasant (formerly Kingfisher) are an indie band from Ann Arbor, Michigan
KP + Mato is the collaborative project of Mato Wayuhi (Oglala Lakota) and Katherine Paul (Swinomish / Iñupiaq), known as Black Belt Eagle Scout. Together, the two artists merge their worlds—Mato’s boundary-bending hip-hop, soul, and experimental production with KP’s soaring guitar textures and raw, melodic indie rock. The result is a lush, emotionally charged sound that lives somewhere between dream pop, electric storytelling, and ancestral pulse.
Mato Wayuhi is an Oglala Lakota artist originally from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He works in film/TV as an actor, producer and musical composer, as well as writing his own music. Most notably, Mato is the composer for the award-winning TV series Reservation Dogs & stars as an actor in the new series The Lowdown, premiering on FX/Hulu. He is also featured on the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Hollywood & Entertainment. His most recent album STANKFACE STANDING SOLDIER is an entirely self-produced record, which Forbes calls a “masterpiece that revolutionizes Indigenous music into a new era.”
Katherine Paul, who records and performs as Black Belt Eagle Scout, crafts music that’s deeply personal and rooted in her ancestral homelands as a member of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. Her acclaimed albums explore themes of identity, healing, and love through layered guitar work and evocative vocals, earning praise from outlets like NPR, Pitchfork, and The New York Times. She’s toured internationally, performed at festivals such as Pitchfork Music Festival and Newport Folk Festival, and shared stages with artists like Sleater-Kinney and Mount Eerie. In addition to her music, KP is known for her visual collaborations and community-centered approach to performance, amplifying Indigenous voices through art, storytelling, and activism.
Their live show, known as The Black Bear Tour, is a seamless set that begins with Mato Wayuhi songs, transitions into KP + Mato collaborations, and closes with Black Belt Eagle Scout songs—all performed with a full live band. The performance flows as one continuous experience, weaving together their voices, styles, and energy into a powerful celebration of sound and collaboration.
Sword ii at Metro
with Fantasy of a Broken Heart
Doors at 7pm, all ages
Naima Bock with Mildred at Normals
Doors at 7pm, all ages
No advance tickets, just show up
Justice Tripp lives in the future. For nearly two decades, the musician has consistently been ahead of the curve: first with Trapped Under Ice, where he led the way for a new wave of heavy hardcore, and then as the mastermind behind Angel Du$t, where he blazed the trail for the current generation of aggressive musicians to branch out into unabashedly melodic territory. Tripp’s work is marked by an ever-evolving creativity that’s made him highly influential, but which has often put him a number of steps ahead of the very trends that he’s helped to inspire. Now Angel Du$t are back with their new album, Brand New Soul: a fearless and open-hearted tribute to all things rock, offering listeners a chance to be right there with them on the cutting edge. Tripp might forever be keeping an eye on the future, but Angel Du$t’s time is now.
Since forming in 2013, Angel Du$t has always been something of a musical catalyst. “For better or worse, it seems like it’s hard for me to do something that’s cool at that moment,” Tripp laughs. “Even with Trapped Under Ice, we weren’t that big of a band when we were active, and then with Angel Du$t it was pretty divisive.” Trapped Under Ice had ushered in a renaissance of metallic hardcore, but as they were winding down, Tripp found himself pulled in a very different direction. “I’d been touring in heavy hardcore bands since I was 13, but my favorite band is Bad Brains and that band had all these major key sounding songs–I just wanted to play something new,” he explains. Angel Du$t’s 2013 demo Xtra Raw and 2014 debut album A.D. were lightning-quick blasts of punk, combining d-beat gallop and hardcore thump with a giant dose of catchiness. A decade on, these records and their follow-up, 2016’s Rock The Fuck On Forever, have proven to not only be modern classics, but also crucial templates for the current boom in hardcore’s visibility and popularity. At the time, however, these were daring sounds for a musician primarily known for his ability to capture rage in a song. “I lost friends over it,” Tripp recalls of Angel Du$t’s early years. “People were so offended and upset by me making this music. Angel Du$t isn’t about self-hatred, it’s about love. And at the time that didn’t feel like what people wanted from me–they wanted me to be the evil guy.”
Far from deterred, this desire to upend expectations became a central tenet of Tripp’s work. 2019’s Pretty Buff and 2021’s YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs found Angel Du$t veering even further into full-on guitar pop, highlighting Tripp’s seemingly infinite well of hooks as well as his knack for imaginative production and lush arrangements. “People can be afraid to grow, afraid to change,” he says. “But I want to be an artist, I want to change and I want to evolve. I love punk and hardcore, and that’s always going to have a place in my heart, but I want to challenge things.” Enter: Brand New Soul, a record that manages to bridge Angel Du$t’s past, present, and future into a 13 song, 29-minute, one-of-a-kind rock and roll joyride.
u+n and Bruiser present
Prison Affair & Snõõper
with D. Sablu & Music Mouse
Doors at 7pm, all ages
Prison Affair is a musical project born in Barcelona around 2018. Lo-fi sound based on synthesized guitar riffs, forceful bass line and denatured vocals. All this supported by a tight rhythm box. In power-trio format for live shows, Adri (Brux, Psycho Tendencies) joins the drums. Prison Affair features ‘mutant Chuck Berry licks, a direct-to-board guitar sound, fast closed hi-hat drumming, and the over-the-top warble you’d want from 8-bit punk.’
Snõõper was thinking about pressure. Blair Tramel and Connor Cummins — co-masterminds of Snooper — had become fascinated by hydraulic press YouTube videos, watching object after object spin and contort before getting flattened. Their heads, too, spun from everything that had gone on during Snooper’s early years. Tramel could relate to the videos, but for the poignance of a difficult transformation, not the defeat of total compression. “There’s a sweet spot,” she says. “For a moment, push and pull create this beautiful dance.” Over the past few years, Snooper has rocketed from Nashville DIY scene stalwarts to widespread adoration in the international underground music scene. The project evolved well beyond anything Tramel and Cummins had originally imagined, and faster than they could track — resulting in disorientation as much as exhilaration. Tramel and Cummins channeled all that energy into writing new material. Their new album, Worldwide, extends directly from the festering punk the band first made their name on, but documents Snooper becoming bolder, catchier, and more confident.
An Evening with Geordie Greep, live at Baltimore Soundstage
Evicshen
with guests, TBA
Victoria Shen is a sound artist, experimental music performer, and instrument-maker based
in San Francisco. Shen’s sound practice is concerned with the spatiality/physicality of sound and its
relationship to the human body. Her music features analog modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin
records, and self-built electronics. Eschewing conventions in harmony and rhythm in favor of
extreme textures and gestural tones, Shen uses what she calls “chaotic sound” to oppose
signal and information, eluding traditionally embedded meaning.
Her personal identity; her body; is the space her work utilizes to restructure sonic meaning. In
her live performances, she proposes an exploration between meaning and non-meaning
through the physical activation of noise tropes. Her probing into these melodic voids
interrogate the ways we perceive value within aural experiences. The appendage-like
instruments and objects she makes, exemplify Shen’s ability to embody through sound her
interest in the tension created by opposition: control and chaos, the unique and the mass
produced, the practical and the absurd.
Maria Somerville (4AD)-- live at Ottobar
doors at 7pm, all ages
By the time Irish musician Maria Somerville started writing Luster, her landmark label debut for 4AD, she had lived away from her native Connemara for quite some time. Having grown up amongst the wild, mountainous terrain of Galway’s rural west coast, she later relocated to Dublin, where she patiently developed an atmospheric dream pop signature inspired by the landscape of her youth – a spellbinding soundworld of gusting ambient electronics, ethereal guitar strums, sparse percussion, and hushed lyrical vignettes. In 2019, this culminated in All My People, a self-released LP steeped in reverb, nostalgia and a yearning for home that won praise from discerning press and listeners alike.
It was upon returning to Connemara, in a house near where she was raised overlooking one of the country’s largest lakes, Lough Corrib, that work commenced on the songs that would eventually become Luster, an album that illuminates Somerville’s music anew, pushing it forward in both sound and spirit. Where All My People conveyed memories and melancholic longing with misty slowcore balladry, these 12 tracks show us an artist who’s more assured in the path her life has taken, and the person she’s become in the process. As she sings in ‘Trip’ – “I can see more clearly than I could before. I know now what's true for me.”
Invigorated by her surroundings and emboldened by her community, Somerville found a renewed sense of creative energy upon returning to home soil. It provided “fertile ground” for free-flowing recording sessions in her small living room studio, where she stitched together demos that were then fleshed out with friends and collaborators, and later mixed by the renowned New York-based engineer Gabriel Schuman. Contributors included producers J. Colleran, Brendan Jenkinson and Diego Herrera (aka Suzanne Kraft), as well as Lankum’s Ian Lynch, whose uilleann pipe drones you can hear in ‘Violet’, and Margie Jean Lewis, whose violin bows reverberate through the ambient haze of ‘Flutter’. Sessions with musicians Henry Earnest and Finn Carraher McDonald (aka Nashpaints) helped “tie it all together”, while contributions from friends Roisin Berkley and Olan Monk enshrined the companionship they’ve shared since Somerville returned to Connemara.
Listeners have had a window into Somerville’s world every Monday and Tuesday morning since 2021 via her beloved Early Bird Show on NTS Radio, where her dawn chorus selections range from blissful ambient and shoegaze to traditional Irish folk songs. Since signing to 4AD that same year, Somerville has toured with her label mates Dry Cleaning, and released two covers for the label’s 40th anniversary celebrations – taking on Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Kinky Love’ and Air Miami’s ‘Sea Bird’. With the release of Luster, she has signaled the arrival of a new era that will see her play around the world in 2025 accompanied by a live band. Rest assured though, no matter where Somerville goes, she’ll take a piece of home with her – a living, breathing, timeless essence you can sense in every note, as clear as the air by the Corrib.
Ryan Davis + The Roadhouse Band with Rosali
Doors at 7pm, all ages
New Threats from the Soul is a masterclass in reducing the sublime to the prosaic, immensity to infinitesimally, and vice versa (the trick can only work both ways). Everything in our universe is essentially flotsam or jetsam, rubbish heaps of fragments and shards. We, especially, are jerry-rigs of bubblegum and driftwood, inconsistencies and incoherencies, dead dreams and necrophagous hopes. The record functions in parallel with Kafka’s winking dictum that there is an infinite amount of hope in the universe, just not for us. New Threats suggests that maybe, just maybe, something like redemption is possible, but only once we’re entirely emptied out and hawked in toto down at Walden Pawn.
“New Threats from the Soul [is] a beautiful and wildly smart record about making do in an upside-down world.” — Amanda Petsurich, The New Yorker
“If you don’t know it yet, it’s my privilege to tell you that Ryan Davis is one of the greatest songwriters of his generation.” — Nathan Salsberg
The Belair Lip Bombs might be Australia’s best-kept secret. But it won’t stay that way for long.
Hailing from the coastal town of Frankston, the close-knit indie-rock four-piece have been building a loyal local following since they first formed eight years ago; fans across the band’s hometown of Melbourne and beyond have been magnetized to the group’s earnestness and ultra-sticky power-pop song structures.
Now, the four close friends — lead singer/guitarist Maisie Everett, Mike Bradvica (guitar), Jimmy Droughton (bass), and Daniel “Dev” Devlin (drums) — are about to embrace a new chapter with their signing to Jack White’s Third Man Records (the first Australian release on the international label) and the unveiling of their endlessly listenable sophomore album, Again, which echoes the album’s joyous opening track (“Again and Again”) and winkingly symbolizes the band’s reintroduction to a global audience.
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Formed against the backdrop of the pandemic in 2020, the project of Awabakal land / Newcastle-based dual guitarist-vocalists Gabriel Stove and Justin Teale, bassist Liam Smith, guitarist and saxophonist Adam Ridgway, and drummer Kye Cherry, dust offer an invigorating new take on Australian post-punk: progressive, catchy, and irresistible. Just as artistically motivated by the fragmented, free-genre steps of Yung Lean and Burial, merging experimental jazz and electronica into immediate post-punk, this idiosyncratic joining of the fringes comes together much like dust’s roots in Newcastle. Since first emerging with their iteration of Australian post-punk on debut EP et cetera, etc, the group have continued to dominate. dust’s industrially shaped rock, endemic to their steel city origins, has taken them out of this world: major continental tours across Australia, the UK and US supporting formative influences Slowdive, Interpol, Bloc Party, Protomartyr, and Militarie Gun, to stages with Hockey Dad, The Belair Lip Bombs, Armlock, Shady Nasty, and more. Industry alike clammer, word of mouth fever following them across un/official showcases at BIGSOUND, SXSW Austin and Sydney, The Great Escape to landing appearances at Laneway, Pitchfork Music Festival, London Calling – as Monster Children firmly put it, once you experience dust, you “will never be the same.”
Mei Semones
Doors at 7pm, all ages
No second-guessing, no overthinking. The way I want to live my life is by doing the things that are important to me, and I think everyone should live that way,” says Mei Semones of her strengthened self-assurance. Through continuously honing in on her signature fusion of indie rock, bossa nova, jazz and chamber pop in a way that highlights her technical prowess on guitar, the 24-year-old Brooklyn-based songwriter and guitarist is quickly establishing herself as an innovative musical force. Since the release of her acclaimed 2024 Kabutomushi EP, a series of lushly orchestrated reflections on love in its many stages, Mei has gone on to tour extensively across the US, cultivate a dedicated following, and write and record her highly anticipated debut album, Animaru. Inspired by the Japanese pronunciation of the word “animal” in Japanese, Animaru is the embodiment of Mei’s deeper trust in her instincts – a collection of musically impressive tracks that see Mei sounding more adventurous, more vulnerable and more confident than ever before.
++ doors for this show are at 4pm ++
Snail Mail
Swirlies
Sharp Pins
& more
OUTSIDE at Union Collective
Doors at 4pm
On Ricochet, her third album as Snail Mail, Lindsey Jordan returns to assert herself as a generational songwriter, clear-eyed and honest as ever. Time has passed, but she remains a sensitive soul, and here her incisive introspection is tethered to newly expansive and hypnotic melodies and ornate string arrangements. While writing Ricochet, Jordan found herself fixating on concerns she’d previously pushed out of her mind, namely death and what happens after.These 11 songs are colored by the anxiety of watching life slip through your fingers, as well as the vulnerability of loving. deeply rather than frenetically. Ultimately, Ricochet is an album about realizing— and accepting—that the world still turns no matter what is going on in your tiny life
Gelli Haha exists somewhere between Studio 54 and Area 51, where dancefloors become playgrounds and cheeky aesthetics ignite imagination. A shapeshifter, a sonic acrobat, a performer with one foot in the cosmos and the other in a slapstick routine, Gelli Haha is a space for pure creative chaos.
For her opening trick, Gelli Haha presents Switcheroo, the debut album via Innovative Leisure, to be released in June 2025. With a shared taste for off-kilter pop and vintage gear, producer Sean Guerin (of De Lux) joined Gelli in turning freshly-formed demos into a high-voltage experiment, abandoning meticulous structure for something freer and more electrifying. Every song on Switcheroo makes use of a myriad of recording toys; wacky analog effects, such as the Eventide Harmonizer, MXR Pitch Transposer, and various Electrix units, fashion an intentionally flawed and strictly silly texture throughout the album.
Gelli Haha’s music thrives on duality: playful but profound, tongue-in-cheek but sincere. “Bounce House” is the child-like innocence; “Spit” is the S-words-only underground-club grit. “Piss Artist” revels in tequila-fueled storytelling about an infamous party moment (involving a jar — don’t ask, just dance), while “Normalize” feels like you’re stuck in Play-Doh.
It’s a practice in play - recording vocals mid-jump, translating drum fills into mouth sounds, granting your best friend’s wish for a song about them. A bear attack crashes through the happy-go-lucky “Dynamite”, “Funny Music” ends with a sudden “BONK!”— because why not?
The emotional rainbow stretches beyond the positive — Gelli pouts and wails on "Tiramisu", demanding to know and feel everything, while "Pluto is not a planet it’s a restaurant" closes the album in a darker, heart-throbbing track with the repeated cry: "I’m afraid."
Switcheroo is the soundtrack to the Gelliverse, a sensory adventure sphere created by Gelli. This live revue is an invitation into a world of dolphin balloons, flutes, mini trampolines, and a stage bathed in the project’s primary color, red - bold and full of mischief.
Gelli Haha isn’t foolproof. It’s by design. Switcheroo is an exercise in letting go, an inside joke turned theatrical spectacle. Participation is encouraged. Surrender is required.
Jjjjjerome Ellis
with guests TBA
at Current Space
Doors at 6pm, all ages
Vesper Sparrow opens with a declaration: “A stutter c-c-can be a musical instrument.” This was an epiphany for the Grenadian-Jamaican-American composer and artist JJJJJerome Ellis, and became the guiding principle of their work. At an early age, Ellis found liberation in the fluid sounds of the saxophone; speaking, by contrast, caused shame and discomfort. Ellis’ stutter manifests as a glottal block, an involuntary pause in their speech. Eventually, Ellis learned to see these pauses as a source of possibility. In a social context, a block can lead to confusion or embarrassment, but in a musical setting that same pause can dilate time, create moments of intimacy, and open avenues for improvisation. Now, Ellis follows their stutter like a path through the wilderness, trusting it like true intuition.
Ellis calls their glottal blocks “clearings,” as in a suddenly open space in the middle of a forest path. Historically, clearings were places where enslaved African Americans could congregate and pray. Ellis explored the complex relationships between Blackness, speech dysfluency, and music on their excellent 2021 debut The Clearing (and in a research paper of the same name). That album—didactic yet inventive, intensely emotional while remaining rigorously intellectual—was like a manuscript bursting with ideas, brought to life with hip-hop, R&B, and jazz. Vesper Sparrow, Ellis’ follow-up, is more focused but just as deep, a prose poem rather than a dissertation. Their focus now is on time: how a stutter can suspend time for both speaker and listener, and how bridging that gap can forge new connections. — Matthew Blackwell, Pitchfork (8.0)