Brian Slattery Photo
Murdervan.
Shaun Bowen, singer and guitarist in the New Haven-based Murdervan, was moving to California, and on Friday night at the Outer Space, he went out with a bang. Lots of bangs.
Midway through the first song of the band’s set, the snare broke beneath drummer Adoni Leftkimiatis’s pounding rhythm. Bassist Andre Roman smiled and gave him hell for it.
“Anybody got a snare drum?” Bowen called through the microphone.
As it turned out, someone did. Bruce Crowder, who’d played two sets ago as the drummer in Mercy Choir, delivered it to the stage, and Murdervan kept playing. It was a defining minute in a night that sent Bowen off on waves of sound that seemed to get bigger and bigger, like the musical tide was coming in.
Telegram Scam.
Telegram Scam — Tim Goselin on vocals and guitar, Jules on vocals, and DC on keyboards — started off the evening with a set that partook of the moodier, atmospheric end of rock, raucous and dreamy at the same time. Mercy Choir — Paul Belbusti on vocals and guitar, Loralee Geil on vocals, Tim Goselin on bass, Bruce Crowder on drums, and (in full disclosure) this reporter on fiddle — stomped and shuffled through a full roster of Belbusti’s originals, with a Leonard Cohen cover thrown in for good measure. It all drew more and more people away from the bar and into the main room of the Outer Space.
Thunders.
As Mercy Choir got its gear off the stage to make way for the Lost Riots, a few Outer Space employees carted off the first two rows of tables to clear space in front of the stage. You might think they expected that space to fill with dancers. It turned out that Riots lead singer Jeffrey Thunders claimed it for his own, leaping from the stage, prowling it from one end to the other, sometimes jumping up on a nearby table, sometimes swinging the mic like a lasso over his head.
The Lost Riots.
The rest of the band — Ben Erickson on guitar, Matt Mullarkey on bass, and Noel Thomas on drums — raged through a set of proudly old-school punk, from Thunders’s sneer to the buzzsaw guitar and pounding rhythm to the songs that often clocked in at under two minutes. The volume in the room doubled. The audience got as close as they dared, packing in among the tables that remained, flinching when the swinging mic headed their way, and whooping at the end of every song.
But the tide came all the way when Murdervan hit the stage. It wasn’t just the broken drum, or the way Bowen instantly lost himself in his band’s sound, swaying to the bigger beats inside Leftkimiatis’s and Roman’s driving rhythm. It was the sheer volume, double again what the Lost Riots had thrown out. It filled the building with a squall that seemed at first to leave the crowd in shock. Then heads began to sway and bob. Eyes closed. People rocked back and forth, hopped up and down.
Bowen.
Bowen got close enough to the mic to eat it and started to sing. His raspy voice somehow cut through the storm. But band and audience all drowned together.
