Gen X Marks The Spot
Sunday at Boston Calling, 23-25 May 2025
Additional photos by Julia Levine
The skies never truly cleared, but neither did the raindrops fall. Fans will take that as a win on Day Three of a wet Boston Calling. Traditionally, Sunday is the busiest day of the fest. Last chance to catch the show, last chance to score the merch, last chance to squeeze through the thin chasm (suck in that beer gut!) between two Porta Potties on the other side of the fence from GA+ VIP to complete the super secret behind-the-scenes route, avoiding the Porta Potty gauntlet traffic by the Food Court.
And if you don’t know what I’m talking about on that last one, you weren’t there.
LINEUP
SUNDAY, MAY 25
Dave Matthews Band / Vampire Weekend
Sublime / Public Enemy / Remi Wolf / Goth Babe
Tom Morello / The 502s / Spin Doctors / IDK How But They Found Me / Mo Lowda & the Humble / Sam Austins / Snacktime / Layzi / Copilot / Vivid Bloom / Nate Perry & Ragged Company
Day Three was Lollapalooza Calling, aimed at Gen X. Ignore the Vampire Weekend feint. Perry Farrell’s personal assistant would have happily signed off on this bill in the ’90s. Dave Matthews Band, Sublime, Public Enemy, Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine) and the Spin Doctors? You’re going to feel like you’ve died and gone to Dot Com Boom heaven. Don’t go alone – bring your kids, they’ll enjoy pop newcomers such as Remi Wolf, Goth Babe and Sam Austins.
Snacktime
Snacktime (📷 Michael Gutierrez)
Hard to think of a better way to kick off a day of music than an eight-piece funk band from Philadelphia named Snacktime. It gets the blood flowing.
And you knew they were from Philly because the entire band (plus a few heads in the crowd) was wearing a “Snacktime”-branded version of the old Allen Iverson-era 76ers jersey. There’s no easier way to give your merch some pop than to hitchhike on the aesthetic of an established brand.
You usually don’t see big bands – big enough to get booked at a festival anyway – doing this sort of thing because of copyright concerns, trademark infringement, intellectual property issues, etc. All the beautiful coinage of lawyers that get paid the big bucks.
Small bands usually fly under the radar in this regard, although I hear that the grocery store Market Basket, headquartered in Tewksbury, whose iconic red insignia bands love to swipe, can be quite litigious when it comes to small-time band merch.
Manuela Sánchez Goubert
Manuela Sánchez Goubert (📷 MG)
Jazz singer Manuela Sánchez Goubert led a six-piece through a bracing set of mostly original songs at the Arena Stage. The first song launched a twin attack of clarinet and piano that promised a set full of energy.
Nobody is going to confuse this stage with the Fort Stage at the Newport Jazz Fest, but Manuela brought the juice, and an ensemble consisting of mostly Colombians gave the proceedings an elevated, international flavor.
The Arena Stage experience was hit & miss this year. But the miss was all ambiance (the place had the faint scent of a used jockstrap), while the music hit every time. Bring it back next year and throw down some Glade plug-ins.
Mo Lowda & The Humble
Mo Lowda & The Humble (📷 Julia Levine)
The winner of the “most beat-to-shit” guitar award goes to the frontman for Mo Lowda & The Humble. It was a white telecaster with chunks of it chipped down to the raw wooden endoskeleton.
Sure, I’ve seen guitars in worse shape at local shows. But touring festival bands tend to keep a tighter ship. The last time you earned “authenticity points” for toting around shitty equipment as a national touring act was probably the late 90s.
Everything else about the Philly band was polished enough for the cover of an American Eagle catalog, including the crisp, unblemished red bandana ringed around the neck of the frontman.
The band announced a new record coming out in June, and for the rest of the set just got down to the business of rock n roll.
Sam Austins
Sam Austins (📷 JL)
While we’re handing out awards, Sam Austins wins the “most mentions of Boston in a single set” award. The Detroit native dropped the city’s name at least every other sentence. I’m not kidding. Whether it was in a song or in stage banter, he sounded like he was trying to win a crazy bet.
You know what? Silly or not, it gets the people on your side.
The three-piece outfit, consisting of a guitarist, keyboardist, and Sam Austins on vocals, breaks a lot of genre boundaries. But you can reliably triangulate their vibe within the borderlands of clubby electro, RnB, and pop. Minimalist arrangements powered each song’s musical idea with power and grace, turning slogans like “Wipe your tears” into crowd-churning anthems.
Nate Perry & Ragged Company
Nate Perry & Ragged Company (📷 JL)
Nate Perry & Ragged Company brought the country, which has had no trouble finding a home at this year’s countrified Boston Calling. The five-piece can root the toot in a roomful of veteran’s apparel, American flags, and Harley Davidson logos with the best of them. But did you know they’ve gone international too with their hit “Evergreens”? Apparently Brazilians are nuts for that track. The Boston-based band played a few news songs as well, including “Count On You,” off their forthcoming EP due in July.
Vivid Bloom
Vivid Bloom (📷 JL)
“Face-melting” is a descriptor that was invented for shoegaze. The superpowered volume, noise, and texture peeling off your skin to reveal the sensitive subdermal layers.
Sounds painful, right? But it can be done in good and bad ways, depending on the quality of the PA. Vivid Bloom is a band that I always enjoy, regardless of the setting, but set them up with the top quality sound system at Boston Calling and you can hear every blessed accent that God intended come through their FX pedals and into your ears.
That’s the good way to melt faces. The bad way is to just crank up the volume and not worry about the mix. One of the things that you pay for with the price of admission at the big fests is a weekend free of that sort of humbuggery.
Remi Wolf
Remi Wolf (📷 JL)
Sound issues plagued the first quarter of Remi Wolf’s set, which started late, presumably to install a fix that didn’t stick. Funny thing, the problem only bedeviled the microphone of Remi Wolf, the center of attention, while the band wailed away freely behind her.
These are moments that can stay chill or turn ugly, depending on the ineffable vibes. The artist on stage plays a big role. I mean, Boston Calling isn’t going to turn into Altamont, but Wolf kept things cool with an easy rapport that pulled the audience in even as the sound issues pushed them away.
Chief on her list of diversionary tactics? Divulging the private codenames of various band members. The drummer Conor is known as Welding, or Wallington, or Wilhelm, or something of that sort.
Thankfully, the microphone was fixed, and the Wolf launched into “Pitiful” before she got a chance to regale us with an anecdote about her American Idol appearance in 2014.
Copilot
Copilot (📷 JL)
I’ve joked about Copilot as the area’s chief representative of “Live, Laugh, Love”-core. It’s funny because it’s true. Or at least it’s true. The band brings a devoted core of Copilot fans wherever it plays, which imbues their performances with the familiar joy of a family reunion or church revival.
Besides the general vibes, what makes Copilot stand out is their triple-headed monster of vocals. Three vocalists, each with unique timbres and attacks, transport the rootsy, gospel-inflected folk rock to new dimensions.
The hustle and bustle of festival appearances can be a whirlwind, but if Copilot gets a chance, they should connect with The 502s, a folk rock band from Florida that scores just as high on the Happiness Index.
Tom Morello
Tom Morello (📷 JL)
Tom Morello unleashed from the duties of playing lead guitar for Rage Against The Machine is every bit the anti-establishment musical hero as a solo act. Maybe more so.
He brought his strong pro-union, anti-Trump message to the Blue Stage, drawing the crowd into an uncensored version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” He even got everyone to jump on cue like Kriss Kross. No small feat for an audience whose average age probably ranged up into the 40s.
Not to be outdone, Morello invited Chuck D onstage for a performance of Public Enemy’s hit “Prophet of Rage.” It was a tight squeeze schedule-wise, with Public Enemy scheduled to perform thirty minutes later.
But the rapper has made a name for himself as a rock n roll fellow traveler, harking back to the genre-crushing “Bring The Noise” collab with Anthrax, so why miss a golden opportunity at Boston Calling?
Public Enemy
Public Enemy (📷 JL)
Not all nostalgia acts feel relevant four decades into their career. Public Enemy does.
The legendary rap group out of Roosevelt, New York closed with their immortal classic “Fight The Power.” It goes without saying that the slogan was a running theme for the entire set. The group has always been unafraid to speak truth to power, which, in the 80s and 90s, filled the “white flight” suburban class with fear.
These days, though, the equivalent demographic brings their kids to dance along to the rhythms, rhymes, and more often than not, the message that Public Enemy delivers, which is heavy on truth, justice, and other ideas that need more love these days.
It’s always a joy to see Chuck D and Flavor Flav together again, backed by the S1Ws, but has Terminator X been swapped out for DJ Johnny Juice?
Layzi
Layzi (📷 JL)
Versatile local popper Layzi closed out the Orange Stage on the final night of the festival.
Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews Band (📷 JL)
You could hardly draw up a sharper dichotomy in music and politics than the competing bands at the Green and Blue Stage to close the last day of Boston Calling.
At the Blue Stage, the fiery ideologues Tom Morello and Public Enemy, standing up for those without a political voice. At the Green Stage, Vampire Weekend and Dave Matthews Band, standing up to get priority seating at the boarding gate. Do we channel music to negotiate the current political travails, or do we use it to plant our head firmly in the sand?
Boston Calling presented us with a binary choice, yet most of us chose “both/and” instead of “either/or.” We want to have our cake and eat it too. Make that make sense.
PHOTO GALLERY
by Julia Levine
RECAP // Sunday, May 25 at Boston Calling 2025.