Now is the time to support the Boston Compass Newspaper.
Actually, the time to support the free local arts and culture paper was 15 years ago all the way up to the present day. But if you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, the paper’s “$15K for 15 Years” fundraiser is a perfect time to jump into the game.
It’s difficult to fathom, in our present state of social collapse and moral turpitude, the amount of self-sacrifice, goodwill and optimism that must have been required to sustain an effort such as the Boston Compass Newspaper for 15 years. While vulture hedge funds and tech titans play austerity games with the economy of journalism, founder Sam Potrykus, the Brain Arts Organization nonprofit and a team of contributors rolled up their sleeves, bypassed the gloom and doom discourse and made it happen with grassroots gusto.
The newspaper, which boasts a circulation of 7,500 and can be found all over Cambridge and Greater Boston, stitches together a diverse community of readers, writers and contributing artists. When editorialists wax poetic about the “social fabric,” if they speak sincerely, they speak about institutions such as the Compass. Each new issue is a moment for celebrating the beauty and resilience of our local cultural scene.
What I love most about the Compass is its record of spotting and platforming new talent. Its coverage amplifies the voice of arts and culture at the margins, not out of a hipster penchant for obscurantism but rather because the newspaper recognizes they’re the sacred spaces from which the mainstream has always drawn its creative fire. With your help, the Compass can keep the lamp lights lit.
Hitting a modest fundraising goal is all that’s needed to meet annual operating expenses – $15,000 is a laughably small sum to support an online and print publication that does so much for our local arts and cultural scene. But I’m not laughing. If the Compass can’t come up with a sum equivalent to what Jeff Bezos makes in roughly six seconds, we will lose this local lighthouse of culture forever. And we will all have taken one step closer to a dark future that we collectively lament but rarely do enough to avert.
The fundraiser ends at midnight March 31. Become a supporter with donations from $5 to $100. If you want to reach out about other ways to contribute, via advertising or major gifts philanthropy, I know they’d love to hear from you.
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Wednesday: Baths, Fashion Club (The Rockwell, Somerville)
Is this an all-Los Angeles bill with Baths and Fashion Club? I wouldn’t be surprised if a local act jumped on as opener at the last minute. Whoever it might be, they should fit the sleek, electro vibe that the touring bands bring. Fashion Club skews a little more aggressive, with some distortion-filled wailers on their latest album “A Love You Cannot Shake.” Baths flashes a fastidious brand of pop that sounds like it’s never more than an arm’s length away from a bottle of mineral water. In other words, music to make love to.
March 27: Horse Girl, Free Range (Arts at the Armory, Somerville)
The story on Chicago’s Horsegirl for a while was “Wow, they’re really young but still write great pop songs. That’s weird!” It’s a story that’s at least as old as Mozart playing all the European courts as a child prodigy. It’s a boring story, though, and the grist doesn’t really hit the mill until one of two things happen. Either the novelty wears off (“I guess the songs were never that good”) or the artist starts to turn the corner into a mature version of themselves in which age no longer counts as anything worth counting. When I heard the band at Solid Sound last summer, I heard a band that was turning the corner. The new album “Phonetics On and On” is an indie rock banger. Fellow Chicagoan Free Range opens.
March 28: The Weather Station (The Sinclair, Cambridge)
A collection of fan remarks about The Weather Station’s latest LP “Humanhood”: “God, what an album.” [ed. God has nothing to do with it.] “Like listening in on someone else’s thought, accompanied by beautiful music.” [ed. This sounds like a “Twilight Zone” episode.] “[The track] ‘Sewing’ sparsely captures the essence of life – the back and forth, the ups and the downs, There is close intimacy here but also endless space. Everything has its place. Thanks for letting me in.” [ed. Songwriter and vocalist Tamara Lindeman has been sparsely capturing the essence of life since her debut EP in 2008. Earlier than that, if you count her work as a child actor in Canada.] “Superb, atmospheric, beautiful, moving. Cannot recommend highly enough – if you’re interested enough to be reading through reviews here, don’t read any further without the album on in the background – you’ll soon find yourself at the checkout buying a copy.” [ed. Was this written by the artist’s mother?] “Cannot wait to see these songs performed live.” [ed. The wait will soon be over.”]
Live: Otis Shanty at New Colossus
In a column at the end of February, I dedicated a few words to the idea that a central feature of what makes a local arts community strong is its willingness and capacity for inviting in what is not local, being a good host, connecting what’s inside our borders with what’s outside.
In that spirit, let me append here a brief live review of local band Otis Shanty, which performed at the New Colossus music festival on the Lower East Side of New York City at the start of March, along with a few other local artists such as Winkler, The Croaks and Worcester’s Mister Motivation.
“Somerville’s Otis Shanty peppered their set with new material. What counts as ‘new’? Anything after their superlative EP ‘Early Bird,’ and for sure after their LP ‘Up On The Hill.’ The indie rockers have a quietly sophisticated approach, using their four-piece to mix sound textures like paints on a palette. Lead singer and multi-instrumentalist (chiefly synth, with the occasional trumpet cameo) Sadye Bobbette split time with other voices on one or two of the newer tunes. Shanty Town is neither Licksville, Riffopolis, Hook City nor Earworm Central. You are not going to be chanting their signature melodies after your team scores a touchdown at the Big Game. They have their golden moments, though, and win you over through an accumulation of small Sunday morning epiphanies.”
The review is part of a comprehensive recap of the six-day event posted in full at Hump Day News. A particularly beautiful part of the festival is how it unfolds across a number of small clubs instead of a single central location. Not unlike the sublime sprawl of the Boston Celtic Music Festival or Nice, A Fest. If local bands want a crash course in the Lower East Side club scene, scoring a gig at New Colossus is a pretty good start.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
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