By Erin Routson

When I was sixteen, a boyfriend who was leaving for college made me a mix tape with Dashboard Confessional’s “Age Six Racer” on it. His expression was earnest and correct: “Hey thanks, thanks for that summer” would echo in my head repeatedly when he moved away. That was what we used music for when we had just gotten our driver’s licenses and fumbled around each other’s bodies awkwardly any time we were alone. Instead of saying things out loud, or forming our own articulations, we relied on someone like Chris Carraba to say it for us. But we did it. Tapes gave us that veil to be shy but revealing at the same time.

Last night at Piano’s, that same kind of fervent declaration ran rampant, and if I were still a girl of sixteen, you can bet some of the songs would’ve ended up on my mix compilation replies to those boyfriends.

Beat Radio started things off, drums & guitar only, giving the music a little more urgency and a little less polish. Brian (drums) and Brian (guitar) led with the most declarative of all, “Teenage Anthem,” the homage to the very mixes I have on the brain. Their material conjures up aimless drives around suburbia, speaks directly to punk rock shows at VFW halls, and most of all seems to focus on that which all rock musicians find their way to express: feelings about love. What I found endearing was the continuum between lyrical exposition and physical exertion: the drummer’s dreamy half-smiles during a particularly strident passage or the singer’s verge into higher register making their songs more heartfelt than an old curmudgeon like me would normally allow herself to fall victim to.

This wade into the soft tissue of everyone’s hearts continued when Sea of Bees took the stage, alone, acoustic in hand. Julie Ann Bee, Jules to her friends, let us into her world of first love and giving without expecting anything in return. Common tropes, maybe, but her voice and turns of phrase during these meditations kept them from being trite. As she expounded on what each song was about prior to playing it (as this was mostly new material), it was hard to stay steely. “I mean these words,” she remarked at one point, after getting a little too open-mic night for New York, and it was obvious she was saying it without any pretense. Her songs were vulnerable without being weak, fragile without any sense that they’d break. I was hoping for a cover of “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” but maybe that’s only because I wanted something, anything, to temper the feelings that welled up.

Via Audio gave me the break I needed. Their pop-over-indie sensibilities reigned as they also worked through new material. Opening with “Tigers,” they set the tone that we weren’t just mining diaries anymore. What they seemed to do, more than anyone last night, was have fun. Their feelings are mixed in their music, but the band is in touch with a little more primal energy than their bill-mates. By the time they reached “Babies,” they actively acknowledged that sometimes, honestly, emotions are only the half of it – capitalizing on pure human attraction is another matter altogether.

Finishing out the night were Snowmine, in the middle of a residency at the venue visiting from the faraway land of Brooklyn. If Spacehog had come out of music culture now, expanded on “In the Meantime” and taken it to a psychedelic, more percussive place, they might have had a chance at being this band. Mossy clumps growing from their keyboards and projections of a density of trees in full force, it was clear we were being taken to the forest. Their spacey, atmospheric sound also allowed me to break from the feelings-fest of the beginning half of the night, but I also didn’t know exactly how I was supposed to feel about what they were saying. In a way, I feel like I lived a whole adolescent life of formative emotions within the walls of Piano’s, just one less fraught.

If I made a mixtape for someone now, it would probably contain music less overt than Beat Radio, somewhere closer to the slightly more ambiguous nature of Snowmine. When talking about it with a friend, we were both sort of ashamed to acknowledge that the directness we’d carried through our teenage years, the years of unabashed declaration of love and adoration, had been buried under irony and detachment, under fear. I know I’d never lead off a mixtape with something so bold now. I have too much guard up; I’d rather you work your way through my twists and turns and figure me out because I feel like I could never be sure enough, now, to start with something so open.

All of the bands last night were sure about how they felt and said it, even if, as their listener, I’m still not.

Snowmine (Facebook)
Via Audio (Facebook)
Sea of Bees (Facebook)
Beat Radio (Facebook)