Friday at the Frequency was a miniature punk rock festival. Proud Parents, Two Inch Astronaut, Krill and eventually headliner Speedy Ortiz took the stage in a frenzy of deadpan intros and high voltage guitar riffs.
With a nearly sold-out show, the tight venue surged with the energy of bearded indie punk savants in high-waisted shorts and converse. Local band Proud Parents matched the audience’s vibes with Ghostbusters T-shirts and an edgy “Just a Girl” cover. Lead vocalist Claire Nelson-Lifson fronted the stage with her cool, Aubrey Plaza air and retro John Lennon glasses.
Two Inch Astronaut took the stage at 10 p.m., repetitively spouting their love for Wisconsin in between inaudible lyrics, each song fairly indistinguishable from the next. Not much of note happened until Krill took the stage, a tight-knit band of misfits from Boston.
Singer and bassist Jonah Furman’s voice fluctuated across the map, at times screechy with voluntary voice cracks. He came off as moody and odd as his vocal chords filled the room, accompanied by fine-tuned melodies.
Krill’s songs were dressed with a gruesomely funny humor. For instance “Turd” offered the angry symbolism of the life as a peanut, wishing someone would swallow it, so it could “take a cling at your insides.” The song was more accurately about feeling needed or worthy, but the metaphors were a nice touch.
Ultimately, it was these humor-laden stabs at reality and worries of a semi-normal 20-something that made Krill worth the listen. By 11 p.m., Furman was just shouting into the darkness about a “glass of milk you forget in the microwave.”
They held a head-banging audience captive all night with strong, stinging guitar progressions and a dry wit. Unlike their predecessors, who took punk rock as an excuse to put noise to nothing, Krill maintained experimental autonomy amid punk genre confines. Throughout the performance their bass notes shined under distorted, angry percussion and near-pop intros gave off Vampire Weekend-esque bounciness.
Unfortunately, headliner Speedy Ortiz didn’t stand out. To be fair, by 11:30 p.m. most patrons were cornered on all sides by a surprising number of middle-aged old men and tolerance for fellow human beings could have been slowly dwindling. Still, Speedy left much to be desired.
The Massachusetts-native band took the stage with their skewed Nirvana sound and inexplicably had the audience in submission.
But despite the audience’s reverence, founding member and guitarist/vocalist Sadie Dupuis led the performance with a muted, morose energy. Letting out song after song with a seemingly bored demeanor from Speedy’s new album Foil Deer, the night drained on. Her voice vibrated with a crazed, angsty, almost frightening ring. She was a girl in a yellow bow and graphic tee, picking apart good lyrics to good songs, but not giving much of a performance.
Luckily the music itself took reign above the performance, including entrancing melodies cornered by crapshoot, loud screaming of nothing (in a good way). Speedy churned out tracks like “the Graduates” and “Silver Spring,” messed around within their grunge palette and spilled out a pale humor between songs. The interims between songs included discussion of Boggle and Dupuis’ “cat silk Renaissance shirt.”
The evening was a bunch of glum, handsome bearded people rocking out to innovative (mostly) punk and grunge. I went home with a sharp ringing in my ears, wired with lyrics from Krill’s song “Brain Problem.”
“Just ‘cause it’s not getting better now / doesn’t mean it won’t ever.”
