Ringo Deathstarr Played Public Assembly [photos]

Photos by Ethan Feuer

For such an incredibly loud night, the four performances at Public Assembly on Saturday were deceptively chill. Members of Advaeta, Sua, Speedy Ortiz, and Ringo Deathstarr watched each other play and raised a drink or two with their fans in the pit. So, if the blazing array of 90s melodies didn’t do the trick, the sheer sociality of the show was enough to raise the holy ghost of the Scene That Celebrates Itself.

Advaeta was a solid opener, with sustained and fiercely tender vocals backed by some endearingly brutal beats. Comparisons to Sleater-Kinney are probably not entirely unfounded. Sua was perhaps most directly reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine, with virtuosic dual guitars constantly whammy-ing the shit out of each other. At their best, a band simply makes you want to close your eyes and listen, which is what they accomplished.

The performance from Speedy Ortiz, in from Northampton, MA, was a special treat and well worth seeing. It’s rare for so much atonality to sound so good, but the unexpectedly structured, utterly unpredictable melodies were somehow all wrong and completely hummable at the same time. Ringo Deathstarr, of course, was everything you’d want to see in a headliner — gracious and fun up on stage, technically tight and energetic from start to finish. In a way, their lost-vocals/pitch-bending crush of sound was the pure synthesis of every act that came before.

Ringo Deathstarr

Speedy Ortiz

Sua

Advaeta