Brian Slattery Photo
Grawlix.
Francisco Barahona Dimichele, on guitar and vocals in Grawlix, flashed the audience at The Rough Draft his hundredth smile, announcing that a song was from the band’s album Betwixt and Between.
“That’s a Peter Pan reference if you’re a literary nerd,” he said, with charming self-deprecation
The invocation of youth was right for the night, which brought four bands together from as close as Milford and as far away as Richmond, Virginia, to play on The Rough Draft’s stage for an audience that stayed invigorated all evening.
First up was the Boston-based Field Day — Joan Anderman on vocals and guitar, Dan Zedek on guitar and vocals, Phil Magnifico on bass and Jefferson Riordan on drums — with a collection of songs built as well as they were executed. Anderman, Magnifico, and Riordan together were a meaty rhythm section, allowing Zedek to roam in the upper register of his instrument, while vocal duties got passed around. The rocker “Soft Target” was “about a fat cat finally getting what’s coming to him,” Zedek said. But making an appearance more than once in the banter was Anderman’s daughter.
“She’s kind of my muse,” Anderman explained. And lest we worried too much about how that daughter was, given the content of the songs, Anderman put our minds at ease. “My daughter’s doing great now,” Anderman explained, to relieved laughter.
Next came the Stratford-based Grawlix, a band that was having about as much fun on stage as any band this reporter can remember in recent memory. Dimichele was perhaps the most obvious about it, rocking back and forth as he threw out wide grins to bandmates with each shift in rhythm or clever phrase. Vocalist and keyboardist Kelsey Rogers and vocalist and bassist Rob Weiss followed suit, beaming as the band worked through its set. Even guitarist Josh Boos and and drummer Mario Baggio, the most laid-back members of the band, appeared quite content with what was going on around them.
The band members’ enthusiasm translated to their music. Every song was upbeat and energizing as Dimichele, Rogers, and Weiss swapped lead vocalist duties and stacked up two- and three-part harmonies. Boos proved himself quite adept at finding one intricate, melodic riff after another. Near the end of the set, in the grip of joie de vivre, Dimichele gamely flubbed the name of the next band and was mercilessly teased by his bandmates.
“I’m terrible with names,” Dimichele said. “I’m better with faces.” The audience, by now infected with Grawlix’s sunny disposition, laughed along.
The third band of the night — Post Sixty Five on tour from Richmond, Virginia — then delivered a tight yet lush, gorgeously orchestrated set of original, emotion-filled songs. Hicham Benhallam’s vocals served to narrate the proceedings whether he used his keyboards to lay down a bed of soft drones or ambient noise to underpin the music. John Matter on guitar and Matt Wood on bass provided propulsive and expansive harmonic structures, while drummer Nick Quillen moved with unerring accuracy between sparse, tension-filled rhythms and skittering, rolling textures. Perhaps the band’s ultimate weapon was Kim McMasters, whose keening, atmospheric guitar ratcheted up the emotion at every turn and broadened the music’s horizons. All together, the band moved fluidly from soundscape to soundscape, coming back at the end to land the audience where it started.
The 30th of February, based in Milford, brought the night to a raucous close as Ant Pieger on vocals and guitar, Kevin O’Brien on bass and keyboards, and Dylan McAloon on drums. A quarter way through the band’s set, Pieger announced that the band was celebrating its 12th anniversary — easy to imagine, as the musical communication between the band members meant that the looseness sounded huge rather than sloppy, and the trio could turn on a dime from squall to near silence, giving space for Pieger’s vocals to come through. By then, though some of the audience had dwindled, others weren’t quite ready to go home, and The 30th of February was there to give them what they needed.
It was as Grawlix had stated as its own set was winding down. “I don’t need anyone,” Dimichele sang at the end of a song. Then, when the music ended, he added, “except you, Rough Draft.”