Brian Slattery Photos
Beach Side Property.
Two high-energy bands — Beach Side Property and Seeing Double — shook the floorboards of Never Ending Books on Tuesday night, turning the State Street community space into a frenzied dance club.
The Shoreline-based emo band Beach Side Property — Kate Burton on guitar and vocals, Ruby DeGoursey on bass and vocals, Patrick LaLonde on guitar and backing vocals, and Ryan Shea on drums — immediately tore into a set of mostly originals with a cover or two sprinkled in for good measure that showcased what the band was all about: tight musicianship, sharp songwriting, and the ability to draw and hold a crowd. Shea on drums was a constant source of propulsion, while DeGoursey’s muscular bass playing provided pulse, rumble, and slyly sophisticated harmonies. On guitars, Burton and LaLonde created shifted textures of sound out of one hook after another. All this was the grounding for Burton and DeGoursey’s earnest, funny lyrics, delivered with a lot of heart and a sly grin. If the lyrics were often about anxieties, heartbreak, and insecurity, the voices of people moving into an uncertain future, the music itself conveyed a constant message of strength and hope — a message amplified by the sheer amount of fun the band was obviously having playing music together. That enjoyment was infectious, packing the room of Never Ending Books with cheering, dancing fans, and giving the touring band that followed the warm-up they deserved.
Seeing Double.
The Oneonta, N.Y.-based Seeing Double — Ali McQueeney on vocals, guitar, and bass, Allie Sandt on vocals, Mike Aaron on guitar and bass, Zach Torncello on guitar, and Dylan Travison on drums — brought their own updated-’70s sounds to the stage in a way that immediately connected with the present-day audience. Travison gave every song the strut and pop it needed, while Torncello showed a real facility for guitar shredding when the music called for it, as it often did. The core of the sound, however, lay with the interplay between McQueeney and Aaron as they switched between guitar and bass, and between McQueeney and Sandt, whose voices together had a magnetic charisma that pulled every song together.
“I know there’s not a lot of room to dance in here, but some of you seem to have figured it out,” McQueeney said. Among those dancefloor innovators were the members of Beach Side Property, who whipped the crowd into a higher state of energy and weren’t averse to a little theatrics, getting down on their knees and offering fluttering hands in worship of Torncello or Aaron when they slipped into guitar-god mode while soloing. The crowd broke out cellphone lights to wave in the air during the downtempo number “The Flood,” and grooved along to a cover of a song by Fleetwood Mac, which McQueeney declared to be “my favorite band of all time.”
The crowd kept dancing to make the floorboards bounce, working up enough of a sweat to raise the heat and humidity all through Never Ending Books’ storefront space. Bands and dancers alike thus took their places among the next generation emerging from the pandemic shutdown to make its mark on the Elm City music scene, and possibly beyond.
