Sam Ray references close friends in his song titles and monikers (e.g., Julia Brown), creating elaborate back stories for his real-life characters.
The best live music almost always happens in the smallest places: tiny clubs, bedrooms, basements. If you’re not pressed against a speaker or close enough to the guitarist that he or she can hear you request that same deep cut over and over again between songs, then the atmosphere isn’t quite right.
Saturday night, in a house just a few blocks from the College Park Marriott Hotel & Conference Center on the western edge of the campus, I was privileged enough not only to experience one of these intimate shows but also to observe a crop of musicians in creative transition.
Nearly a year ago, I wrote an extensive profile on Sam Ray, a College Park-based artist who was making ambient music as Ricky Eat Acid and fronting his newly conceived indie-pop band Julia Brown. It was a transitional time in Ray’s life — he had just disbanded his acclaimed punk outfit Teen Suicide to focus on crafting quieter, prettier songs.
But Saturday, backed by a slightly different rotation of musicians, Teen Suicide performed its first proper reunion set in College Park since retiring the name in January 2013, featuring a sound that’s tighter and noisier than ever.
The set, which lasted just more than 30 minutes, was full of essential cuts — “Everything Is Fine,” “Oh My God” and “Goblins Cry Too,” to name a few. However, the band’s musicianship has evolved and matured: The drum fills have grown more complex, the guitar lines now rounded out by self-assured bursts of nomadic noodling a la Stephen Malkmus.
Though mainly supported by punk fans, Teen Suicide came across more like a well-seasoned rock band that night, with a refreshing confidence and conviction in its sound that may not have come to fruition during its initial incarnation.
The show’s headliner, Alex G, who traveled down from Philadelphia, oozed effortlessness. He had a touch of dry, almost hilarious self-confidence in the way he and his band — who make catchy, guitar-heavy pop music in the style of The Modern Lovers and Weezer — were able to meticulously reproduce their music in the live setting without breaking a sweat, as if all of the songs were hardwired into their DNA.
By the time they started playing at 10:30 p.m., the house was emptier than during Teen Suicide, inspiring a loosey-goosey sense of spontaneity in Alex G. The band treated those who stuck around to a few new songs off its upcoming album, as well as a cover of Third Eye Blind’s iconic “Semi-Charmed Life,” which had the entire basement singing along to the chorus.
The night peaked, though, with G’s performance of “Message,” a languid, Southern rock-leaning cut off his best album, RULES.
“Every year I’m getting older/ But every day I feel the same,” he sang in unison with the remaining spectators. There’s a shred of melancholy in that line, the idea that we may grow and evolve yet achieve no greater sense of overarching clarity.
Then again, that’s why we need live music: Artists evolve, tastes change, scenes grow and die, but the best concerts will always be centered around intimacy.
And it was me who requested “Message.”
