GOLDEN GIRLS They may have called the audience “boring as fuck,” but they did sign autographs. |
May 13 brought a promising line-up to O'Brien's Pub in Allston: Boston avant-pop artist Birthdays and Worcester fuzz-punks Golden Girls. Birthdays have been playing often of late, but the only Golden Girls we're apt to see around town are the syndicated-TV-show variety.Birthdays — a member of the FMLY collective, with tapes out on Impose and Breakfast of Champs — played a killer set to a half-full bar. They closed with the tremendous "Howolding Girls," which was released on a seven-inch recently and is already a contender for best dance-party jam of the summer. Get it now.
When Golden Girls took the stage, the crowd downsized even further. The punky guitar-rock quartet first gained attention last year when Massachusetts indie label Burning Mill Records put Worcester on the national map, releasing Golden Girls' scuzzy debut EP, Amateur Teen Sex Attics, simultaneously with Dom's Sun Bronzed Greek Gods. Whereas Dom later signed a major-label contract with EMI, Golden Girls continued to thrive in the Worcester psych-punk underground; now they're finishing a full-length and seven-inch with engineer Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur Jr., Witch) and building up Wormhole Studios, a music factory "sort-of structured after Motown," says singer/guitarist Andy Cary. "It's all about the Wormhole. Wormhole, wormhole, wormhole."
Golden Girls tore through a distortion-heavy set of new unreleased songs plus year-old hook-heavy hits like "Total Bummer" and "Sixteen Candles." This was followed by patches of noisy feedback and random covers, and as usual, their weird on-stage antics entertained. "We're from Allston, we just moved here, we go to college," said guitarist Ben Wheeler, before diving into an instrumental of "Sweet Home Alabama." Cary took it up a notch, telling the small crowd they were "boring as fuck" before kicking over his mic stand, swigging a PBR, and passing off his guitar to some dude in the audience.
After the show, as Golden Girls filled me in on recent Worcester happenings out on Harvard Ave, the band showed some compassion and signed autographs for a fan from Japan.
