Boyscott
Punctuating wistful, daydreamy indie rock with surfy guitar hooks, Boyscott took shape in college dorm rooms and grew into a fully formed band. The loose collective that made up the project completed their whimsically drawn 2015 debut Goose Bumps before ever playing live.
Boyscott began in 2015 as an outlet for singer/songwriter Scott Hermo’s recording experiments while he was attending college in Nashville, TN. Hermo recorded in his dorm room and sometimes enlisted friends to help flesh out his light and breezy indie tunes. Fellow schoolmates and musicians Emma Willer, Tiger Adams, John Lewandowski, Ellen Ivy McGuirk, and Noah Miller joined him to bring a live energy to Hermo’s recordings and together, the group completed debut album Goose Bumps and self-released it in late 2015. When Boyscott began playing live, school commitments kept a solid lineup from forming, but Hermo enlisted a rotating cast of friends and musicians, including Davey Alaimo of Bunny Boy and Noah Dardaris of Another Michael, to play shows and go on tours. The band’s acclaim grew organically through consistent touring and their album, which caught on in a grassroots fashion. A physical release of Goose Bumps arrived in 2019 as a joint release from Top Shelf Records and Babe City Records.
Dead Gowns
Ideas of shedding, and the power and tenderness required to do so, are evoked again and again over the course of Dead Gowns’ 2022 EP, HOW. ‘Renter Not a Buyer’ is the cheekiest of the tracks, but also the most indelible. The narrator, hungover and late to work, tumbles down the stairs from an apartment too drafty to be habitable. Bleeding from the mouth, she tries to kiss her date goodbye, avoiding a larger reality in her body. Songwriter Geneviève Beaudoin’s own experience with endometriosis informs this exploration: she sets concealed pain in direct opposition to the demands of saving face. This process is invariably fraught with contradictions and she is the first to recognize the absurdity of trying at all.
The rest of the EP is less fixated on the pitfalls of how one presents to the world. Though Beaudoin first wrote these songs as unspoken dialogues, she sees them now as affirmations intended for herself. ‘How You Act’ is a reclamation of agency: “Yeah it’s messy, grow up your heart” elucidates this revelation, with Beaudoin’s voice ringing out unaccompanied for a moment of quiet triumph.” ‘Change Your Mind’ is a celebration of this new life, emerging with gusto from the past. Set atop swelling strings and the warm swagger of a Fender Rhodes, this affirmation feels earned and regal. But it’s the final track, ‘Real Life,’ that reminds Beaudoin there’s no fixed point here. Her desire for change will always run alongside a past that won’t entirely stay past.