Drenched in sweat and physically exhausted, Off With Their Heads took a deep breath and prepared to play their final song of the night. Guitarist Zach Gontard looked out at the crowd and grinned

“You’re all like a bunch of fucking animals,” said Gontard. This punk quartet from Minneapolis has been turning audiences into wild, ravenous packs for years now. Great Scott on Monday night was no exception.

One of the hardest touring punk bands in the business, Off With Their Heads is currently on the road supporting their recently released fourth E.P., <em>In Desolation</em>. It is their first on Epitaph Records, having made the indie-to-major switch from No Idea Records last year.

While the production is cleaner than their past efforts, the group has lost very little of the grit or power that dominated their previous albums.

The music hasn’t changed much either since their debut E.P. Hospitals in 2006. There is only so much you can do with three, sometimes four, power-chords. But this supposed weakness manifests itself as strength when you witness the break-neck pace and raw emotion on display in person. The sing-a-long choruses and “wooooh” backing vocals are all that much more satisfying when perfectly played in the live arena.

Lead singer Ryan Young got the crowd involved early, stage diving at the beginning of the second song. It set the tone for a raucous night that saw several over-exuberant moshers thrown out before the end of the set. This was a punk show.

The band provided no relief, barely taking any breaks in between their three-minute punk anthems. Even their newest songs were met with enthusiasm, as the majority of the audience had already memorized every distraught-ridden word of Young’s new material.

“This kind of threw us for a loop,” said Young, referring to the large weeknight crowd.

As the band ended with “Clear the Air,” the final track off of In Desolation, Young stage dived one last time. Instead of returning to the stage, he made his way through the crowd, simply walking out the front door as the band played the final chords of the night. Shirtless and drained of all energy, Young became just one of many to hear the end of the set from outside.

–Jon Hillman

Here at TeaParty Boston, we’ve made it our mission to showcase only the best local music that Boston has to offer. When we were planning our weekly residency project at the Lizard Lounge this past winter, we had a lot of bands to choose from, but only a handful were selected. Viva Viva definitely made the cut. They rocked with Leisure to a sold out room, and have been staying busy with a new recording project, as well as planning some dates at Boston’s top venues.

We recently sat down with them to talk about what it is that rising bands in Boston do, and even got some advice for new bands. They recently released their first full-length release, self-titled which is available online.

Viva Viva will be playing at Great Scott on June 16th, and will also be playing at the Middlesex Lounge on June 21st, joined by their friends the Naked Gods.

- Matt Rohr

Hey guys, thank you for taking time to meet with me in the studio. What are you guys working on in here?

Dan: We’re working on songs right now that will eventually become a release that we’ll put out in some manner, one way or another. We don’t have a name for the new release, and it’s kind of far off in the distance, but we’re working on writing and recording new stuff.

Chris: We we’re talking about different ways that we could put it out too, maybe do some 7” records…

D: We’re really just waiting till we have a solid body of work and then we can listen to it all together and decide from there what the best way to put it out would be. It will be under 10 songs when were done with the sessions, we’re hoping for around 7 songs. We also just put our first record online through our bandcamp, and we’ll have physical copies of the record soon. We’re working on vinyl–no promises or expected release dates–but that’s something were looking into. On may 31st the record also went up on iTunes, and a few other web-based music stores.

How would you say you typically approach your songwriting, being a larger group of 5?

D: Chris and Dave write most of the music, but of course we have our parts.

C: We’re working on three songs right now, and I wrote two of them, and Dave wrote the other. We pretty much just went into the practice space, and banged around with it a little, and everything just kind of took its shape. Everybody helps with the arrangements. I’ll have a pretty good idea, but they help me smooth it out. It really goes on a song-to-song basis though, some songs I’ll just have on lock from the get-go, but we’ve been together for a while, so we kind of know what’s appropriate.

Are there any artists that you would say have really shaped who you guys are? Or maybe some artists that are unrelated to your sound that you just really like and have inspired you?

C: Personally, I don’t really follow what’s going on with music now, I don’t know who’s “big” or anything like that. There’s definitely nothing new that has inspired me. I try to listen to music that isn’t what we really sound like, though. Our music kind of fills that gap with me. I try to make music that I’d want to hear and enjoy, but I heard this expression the other day that I definitely agree with, and that’s “we’re not trying to re-invent the wheel, just keep it rolling.”

You guys have a few Boston dates in June, but are there any plans for a tour coming up?

C: We’re gonna take the summer off, and then maybe around the fall we were planning on doing some sort of tour, or string of dates. We’ve only done one tour, and it was mostly in North Carolina.

D: That tour went really well because we were with our friends’ band the Naked Gods, who will actually be playing with us in June, on the 21st. They’re from down there, and we went around with them. We were really lucky cause they have a great following down there, and we did five shows around a weekend there. We were lucky cause there are a lot of booking agents who just don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. We’ve gone to New York and played awesome shows, and we’ve also gone there and played to absolute shit.

C: We played sold out shows that were around 300 people, and it was incredible. That’s unheard of for a band like us.

How did you all meet one another?

D: Well it all started through music that we were working on separately, in different bands and such.

Dave: It was kind of like we were all sick of the bands we were in, and we thought to ourselves, man I want to play music with those people. We just kind of looked around and were like, they look cool, oh, she plays keys, let’s get her, etc. It just kind of snowballed together.

C: A while back I was actually playing in a different band, and I cancelled one of my shows just so I could see these guys play. (laughs)

Are there any moments that were really monumental to the band so far? Or maybe some moments that you look back on and think, “well I’m never doing that again”?

D: You gotta really watch who you get in bed with, per se, when it comes to the business aspect of things. You have to have some sense of self preservation and a good business sense because it’s really easy to get suckered in by fast-talking types and people to talk a big game and can’t back it up. You either have to really trust who you’re working with, or do it on your own. You kind of have to get burnt once or twice to learn from your mistakes too.

VIVA VIVA plays Great Scott on June 16th and  Middlesex Lounge on June 21st

Here’s our weekend to-do list. Print it out. Check it off. Enjoy.

–TeaParty Boston

GENTLEMEN HALL

[ ] Get up close and personal

with Best Boston Breakout Artists Gentlemen Hall at Berklee sponsored intimate concert space Cafe 939

[ ]Yuk it up with comedians

BLVD. Comedy and comedians Ben Kronberg, Dan Boulger, Sameer Naseem and friends

[ ]Celebrate the life of Ian Curtis

and the synth pop of Conservative Man at The Pill at Great Scott

[ ]Fall in love

with Holly Miranda at TT the Bear’s

[ ]Discover some of Boston’s best and brightest

at the Middle East Upstairs with Humanwine, Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, Mighty Tiny and Dave Magario

[ ]Wish Mr. Moz many happy returns

at Morrissey’s Birthday Tribute at Great Scott

[ ]Support your favorite local arts and music programs

at the Walk for Music 2010

[ ]Put on your Sunday best

and head to Church for Brad Byrd, Autumn Hollow, John Colvert and Sam Reid

Photo: Michael Young

“I hate to ask, but is anyone near the fucking bar?”

That’s Kate Nash, partway through her set at Great Scott, humbly begging her adoring audience for a drink . They were all too happy to oblige, and through the rest of the set, the PBRs and vodka-Cokes fell like manna from heaven.

If anyone ever deserved a drink (and a little manna), it was Nash that evening. The night before, she had tripped in a Toronto hotel and wound up with a sprained ankle. But a twisted joint wasn’t about to come between Nash and her performance, the second on her North American tour.

Though the London-based Nash is a pretty big deal in the US, and a pretty giant deal in the UK, this series of gigs is all about playing eensier venues—Great Scott being the eensiest of all. She was performing in support of her sophomore album, My Best Friend is You. This one is rowdier than Nash’s first, less pop and more rock. But it’s still got all her trappings—sweet hooks, take-no-prisoners lyrics, and hefty helping of post-millennial twentysomething rage.

Photo: Michael Young

The Great Scott show was ragey too, fueled in no small part by the fact that Nash was pretty well in the bag by night’s end (fear not, impressionable children—it was all in the name of pain management). Nash played most of the show seated at her keyboard for her ankle’s sake, which had a banner draped in front proudly proclaiming, “A cunt is a useful thing.” Otherwise, she stood on one leg with the other propped up on a stool to play guitar. Her backup band was most obliging.

The show chiefly featured songs from My Best Friend, with a few forays into classics from her debut album, Made of Bricks. And then there was the banter. She ended the talky, brilliant “Don’t You Want to Share the Guilt?” by asking the audience, “That’s my song about you. Do you like it?” She prefaced coming-out-of-the-closet anthem “I’ve Got a Secret” growling, “For all you homophobes out there, this song’s just for you.”

As the show progressed and Nash grew tipsier, the songs got louder. Nash palm-slapped the piano keys and attacked the guitar strings, and the audience didn’t mind one bit. It takes a serious trooper to play a show the night after she’s been confined to a wheelchair. But an indefatigable chick like Nash, who got her start on MySpace, grew big, stared the many-fanged fame beast in the face and didn’t ditch one iota of personal quirk, isn’t the type to let a little thing like bodily injury keep her down.

–Jenna Scherer

Photo: Michael Young

Photo: Michael Young

Here’s our weekend to-do list. Print it out. Check it off. Enjoy.

–TeaParty

SPIRIT KID

[ ] Dance way past a Waterloo Sunset

at The Pill w/ special guest Spirit Kid at Great Scott

[ ] Eat your heart out, Dynasty

When MEandJOANCOLLINS play TT the Bear’s

[ ] Seek some after-hours beats

At Lazy Rich at Rise

[ ] Eat some homestyle food and enjoy roots rock

When Kingsley Flood and Sand Machine play the Rosebud Diner in Davis Square

[ ]Dig on Tusk, minus the truckloads of cocaine and intra-band dating scenarios with

At The Cover-Up presents Fleetwood Mac at the Lizard Lounge

[ ]Catch ‘em at a smaller venue in JP and realize that the music journos were right about them being good and all

When Oneida|DOM|Big Digits|Golden Girls play The Temple

[ ] Join the $10 all-you-can-drink rock lovefest

When Pretty&Nice|Girlfriends|Young Adults|Weekend Dads play Fenway Park

NAKED ON ROLLERS SKATES

[ ]Help, um, support a band with the most visually titillating name

When Naked on Rollers Skates play the Hard Rock Cafe

[ ]Drink while schooling others on your cocktail IQ at

At Tipple Trivia at Upstairs on the Square

[ ]Find out why Sunday is the new sexy

At Foxy at ZuZu in Central Square

If you haven’t heard the boisterous buzz around Los Angeles-based Local Natives, let me bring you into the loop. This band has been blowing up, and quickly, as they toured Europe last year before returning to the US to sign with Frenchkiss and release their debut LP, Gorilla Manor, earlier this year. The music of Local Natives is a stunning blend of some of the best artists today, while still maintaining an original sound that makes it distinct. The quintet seamlessly fuse the afrobeat rhythms of Vampire Weekend, the soaring and wholesome harmonies of Fleet Foxes, and the joyous, big orchestral sound of bands like The Arcade Fire. Live, their show is captivating, as their songs constantly shift rhythmically, instrumentally, and vocally. Percussionist/keyboardist Kelcey Ayer and guitarist Taylor Rice split vocal duties, adding to the complex depth of the band’s sound.

Local Natives will play this Saturday at Great Scott with labelmates Suckers. Though the show has been sold out for a few weeks now, we’re giving you enough of a warning to catch the band next time they are in town on August 5. They’ll be sizing up to the Middle East Downstairs to meet their growing demand, so make sure to grab tickets to that show before it sells out, too. I caught up with Taylor as the band made their way to the east coast after their debut at Coachella to talk about their European successes and upcoming plans for the US.

–Kevin Junker

Got any ridiculous or amazing stories from tour so far?

Yes, playing Coachella this year was ridiculous and amazing. Growing up in Southern California, playing Coachella has always been esteemed as pretty much the highest honor bestowable to a band. We didn’t expect to play the festival this year, but the tent that we played was packed (also unexpected by us). It seems like the US has been listening to our record while we’ve been away touring in Europe.

Was it at all disorienting to find yourselves successful and landing a record deal in Europe before the US?

Getting noticed in Europe first was certainly surreal, but it was also exciting. We always imagined Europe as some far off destination for bands who are established in the US and on their third album. We toured ten countries on a winter tour a few months ago, and what was disorienting was that people who didn’t even speak English that well were turning up at our shows and singing the words to our songs.

What has the band enjoyed about playing in Boston?

We’ve played TT The Bear’s Place twice before, and both shows exceeded our expectations. This was when we were still self-booking tours and typically playing to the bartenders and regulars, but both times we were surprised to see fans in Boston who knew our music long before we had a record out.

What’s playing in the tour van? (or bus?)

Van. This is actually our first tour with a trailer, so we feel as though we’re simply drifting across the country in the lap of luxury this time, not having to sleep in the back of the van on top of the gear. The driver (that’s one of us, on a rotating schedule) controls the music. Lately I’ve been listening to the new Broken Social Scene and new Dr. Dog records.

If you guys ever stop touring, what can we expect next?

The makings of a new album. We are always writing on the road as individuals, but our band collaborates in a way that is difficult to achieve during soundcheck. Secluding ourselves will be an important part of creating our second album.

A new type of garage dance-rock is getting Boston’s feet moving, and for that we can thank The Honors. The four-piece from Allston are practically regulars at The Pill at Great Scott and Throwed at the Middle East. Basically, they can fit into just about any type of bill. Their versatile sound reflects shades of surf rock and punk rock, but overall is completely original and always energetic.

Lead singer Brandon Heisler has a distinct raspiness to his voice that shadows classics like Morrissey. In fact, the band is playing a tribute show to Morrissey at the Great Scott on May 22nd. Until then, you can check out The Honors on Saturday at the Middle East Upstairs for what is sure to be a hot and sweaty kickoff to another Boston summer. I was able to get some background on the band as I chatted up with drummer Jason Trikakis. From the words we shared, it is clear that the Middle East will be the place to be come May 8th.

–Perry Eaton

So Give me some background on The Honors, who plays what?

I’m Jason, I play drums. Andrew (Bayardi) plays guitar. Brandon Heisler, he’s the lead vocalist and he plays guitar. Our bass player’s name is Roland (Nicol).

How did you guys initially come together?

Well, Brandon and I met in London, we were kind of studying abroad, or studying broads as we like to say. We got started playing basement jam sessions at the university, Regents College, which was cool because it’s Europe and things are much more open and free and there was a bar on campus. Down the hallway from the bar area, there was a rehearsal space for students and you couldn’t play during the day, but at night they would give you a key and they had a drum kit and some guitars and stuff. So Brandon and I would go to this jam spot and invite all of our friends to come down and just have these duo jam sessions. That was all back in 2003 or 2004.

We started gathering a bit of a following, or a group of folks who would always come sit in on these jam sessions. Brandon is from West Virginia and I’m from the Boston area and when we moved back home, we had talked about forming a band at some point, but we were still in school and had some other priorities. Several years later, Brandon moved up to Boston and was like, “Hey man, I’m taking you up on this, we’re gonna form a band.” So that’s how this project kind of got on its feet.

I knew Roland from another band I was playing with called the Press Project, which is kind of like a hip-hop band. Our guitar player Andrew is also from West Virginia and he and Brandon knew each other through mutual friends in West Virginia, but actually never met each other in Boston. He went to Berklee for a couple of years and graduated from there and when he connected with Brandon here in Boston, that’s how he joined the group. It’s a little all over the place, but it all worked out.

How does songwriting work? Is there one principle songwriter or is it more of a collaborative effort?

Well we have a new album coming out in May and that material was usually the result of garage band sessions that Brandon did in his apartment that we took the skeletal structure of and collectively put together and created the larger themes of the song. So I’d say that the ideas come from one of us initially, like a template and then the group kind of comes together and improvises on it. We’re all trained improvisational artists and jazz musicians, so improvising is kind of what we do outside of the rock and roll that we play. We’ll take an idea, improvise on it, take a form that works, and kind of just take it from there. Lyrically, we take more of a storytelling approach, like we have songs about getting drunk at Great Scott and the other fun stuff that happens in this area.

So, you guys are from Allston Rock City. Tell me, what is the best band in Allston besides the Honors?

Oh man, there are so many good ones in the area that I love. We have friends in Aloud, and the Luxury, and the Lights Out, and other bands. I wouldn’t even know where to begin, there are just too many good bands in Allston.

Why do you think Allston in particular is such a musical community. Like, why do so many bands wind up flocking to Allston?

I’d say because it has cheap living, and musicians don’t make money. Of course there’s also BU and other schools right down the street, so there’s a population of young adults who like to go out and see live music. Great Scott has been a cornerstone in the Allston music community and it has turned the community around in the past five or six years. Great Scott is now this in-demand hot spot for independent musicians to play and I think that attracted a lot of people to the area. Every band knows that the clientele and the consumers that are going to be there are specific to indie music. Its not like you’re playing your music at a big downtown Boston venue where the crowd isn’t there to hear your style of music. It’s really a great collaborative community in Allston. Allston is the shit.

It’s funny, I’ve spoken with a lot of bands who have come out of the Berklee area and they have expressed how tough it is to collaborate with other Berklee musicians. It’s cool that Allston has such a good outlook for bands.

I think so as well. I do still wish that there was more collaboration going on amongst musicians. There are definitely a fantastic group of people who are trying to make that happen, trying to make it more of a community. I love what Michael V is doing at the Great Scott on Friday nights at Pill. He books bands that are specific to the dance night and kind of clumps them together as “Pill bands” or bands that have played this particular event and he’s very keen on who he hires for these shows. That definitely inspires collaboration because we all have a similar sound and a similar vibe, but at the end of the day, I think everybody just wants to help each other out.

What are your favorite venues to play in Boston?

I’d say the Middle East, the Great Scott, and TT’s. That’s like the rock triumvirate, and we do really well in those places. We like the sound systems there, the people who work there, and those venues just kind of come with a built-in crowd, which I think is really important because you bring your own fans in, but you also want to reach out to new fans and new people.

So, do you guys have a new release in the making at the moment?

Yeah man, we’re in the process of mixing I guess what you could consider to be our debut album. We have a couple of EPs out, but those were more for finding out who we are and even more so working out the identity crisis of what our sound is and what we are going for. We had to figure that out just by writing songs. So, for the new effort, we recorded it, wrote it, and pretty much finished all of the tracking in about a two week period. We tracked it in like two days at New Alliance with our good friend Ivan Mennasia who engineered it and is helping us produce it. It all happened really fast and we’re hoping it comes out some time in early May. We’ve already released four tracks online, we’re trying to be really casual about the release date so we can feed our audience new music every few weeks rather than releasing it all at once. Expect that to come soon, sometime in early May-ish.

So if people come out to the Middle East show on May 8th, what can they expect that night?

Lots of sweat, lots of bumpin’ and grindin’, actually I don’t know about that. We try to play music that make people dance, so that’s why we get hired to play these electro-dance nights like Throwed at the Middle East and the Pill at Great Scott. Although I wouldn’t consider our music to be electro-dance, it’s rock and roll music that we want people to get down to. A lot of our new material is more along the lines of 50’s/60’s surf rock, where people can come and get up and dance around with their friends and get a little crazy. Expect people to be having a good time.

The Honors play Saturday May 8th at Middle East Upstairs

Photo: Guy Eppel

4/20 has become synonymous with a few different things: smoking pot, not going to class to smoke pot, taking an extra long lunch break so that you can smoke pot. When Adam Green comes to town, however, 4/20 becomes more related to things like raw grooves, over-sized captain’s hats, torn Garfield shirts, and supreme amounts of sweat. Fenway Recordings brought Green back to Allston’s Great Scott on Tuesday to support the release of his new album Minor Love.

Openers and Boston natives the Dead Trees also played as Green’s backing band. Now based in LA, they roll back through Boston a few times a year and seem to get sharper and tighter every time they return. Giving the crowd a heaping sample of what to find on their upcoming album, they showed a real grasp on tempo changes and a newfound acquisition of sunny California sounds. Between the new stuff, a hunk of tunes off of their last album King of Rosa, and an especially rad cover of John Lennon’s “Surprise, Surprise,” the Trees left Boston with a sweet taste in its mouth and a widespread impatience for the release of their new record.

Fans packed the front of the house as Green took the stage sporting a studded leather jacket, a Garfield T-shirt, and a bottle of Amstel. With the Trees behind him, he tore through an onslaught of new tunes, starting with the lead-off track from Minor Love, “Breaking Locks.” With requests and even the occasional heckles being spit out from spirited audience members, Green powered on with new highlights like “Buddy Bradley,” “What Makes Him Act So Bad,” and “Give Them a Token.” After a handful of plugged-in numbers, the band left the stage and Green performed a few with an acoustic. Green fed the crowd some bare-bones versions of tunes like “Bluebirds” and “Drugs.”

When the Dead Trees returned to the stage, Green ramped it up and the crowd responded in a big way. As he shuffled and undulated on stage, audience members began to shake and boogie to “Emily” and “Dance With Me.” Great Scott heated up so much that Green ripped off his Garfield shirt and went for two successful stage dives. The upbeat clap-along “Goblin” kept the energy soaring throughout the lengthy set until he reached the final tune of “Jessica”- a bittersweet ode to American sweetheart Jessica Simpson.

Between both acts, Allston was reminded not only what rock sounds like, but also what it feels like. The band sounded absolutely flawless, Green’s struts were both hilarious and energetic, and the crowd jumped and bumped with enthusiasm and passion. Despite any Marathon Day hangover or 4/20 daze, the audience embraced this show for what it was: a night of pure, ass-kicking rock. By the end of the night it was clear that both Adam and the Dead Trees are welcome back in Boston any time.

–Perry Eaton

On April 28th at Great Scott in Allston there will be many reasons to celebrate. Fenway Recordings will welcome London’s Kate Nash as headliner for their sold-out one hundredth Sessions show and Nash will celebrate the release of her highly anticipated sophomore effort, My Best Friend Is You. New York’s Supercute!, an aptly-named trio of teen girls, will be the supporting act.

So here’s the deal–the show is sold-out, but we’ve scored a pair of tickets to giveaway! All you have to do is email us at win@teapartyboston.com and tell us why you want to see Kate Nash. Along with a pair of tickets you will also receive a copy of My Best Friend Is You, so make sure you send us your mailing address too. Three runner-ups will be chosen and they will receive a copy of Nash’s new album.

–TeaParty

Pre-order album on Newbury Comics or iTunes.

Photo: Guy Eppel

“Does the Great Scott still have a carpet?” Adam Green is asking the important questions as he anticipates his show this Tuesday at the Allston venue, “Because I was thinking to myself how I love me a bar with a carpet.” Carpet or not, the Great Scott will be occupied by one of rock’s finest and most prolific young talents in Adam Green.

Green returns to Boston in support of the recent release of his sixth studio album, Minor Love. His first time working with producer Noah Georgeson, the album continues to have the same Lou Reed-style vocals with lyrics dusted with gritty Americana. When asked how fans have been receiving Minor Love so far on the tour Green said, “When I first started the tour at the beginning of January, not many people knew those songs very well. Now that the tour is ending, the sets have become very different than the ones in the beginning.”

So what’s Adam Green’s take on Boston? Well, he was quick to assure me that he never really went to Emerson: “I was only there for, like, 10 weeks and then I left.” But that’s not to say that he didn’t like Boston. “I really liked how there were so many trannies in the Chinatown part,” he elaborated, “Because that was like right near where I lived.”

“It’s pretty cool playing with them,” Green says of his tourmates, fellow former-Bostonians, the Dead Trees, with the quartet serving as both his opening and backing band. “I mean they don’t really know how to play their instruments but they have a really cool attitude towards life.”

While the material off of Minor Love is more relaxed and loungey, Green still brings the rock to the stage, complete with his signature suave dance moves and Jagger-esque struts. He even admitted to having dreams of making a punk album in the future. “I have these fantasies about making a metal album,” he says, “But then I listened to metal for like two hours and I realized that I don’t really like it. I want to incorporate some metal ideas into my new album, like I’m in love with the aesthetic, not the music.”

Well that’s where Adam Green is at right now–somewhere between metal, and music that isn’t metal–but hat can we expect next Tuesday at the Great Scott? “You can expect a bunch of guys with colored hair,” he says, “Everybody is going to be dressed grunge-style, because the Dead Trees are grunge and I’m picking up that style and becoming grunge myself, and also expect a variety of different stuff from all of my albums.” Between Green and the Dead Trees, anything is possible in Allston Rock City come Tuesday night. “Also,” he adds, “Expect to see lots of trannies.”

–Perry Eaton

Photo: Guy Eppel