Platonic Skulls
Friendly Bones at Crystal BallroomRunnner and Sun June trade secret handshakes at Crystal Ballroom on Thursday, 2 November 2023.
Caroline Says what in the opening slot. What? Got you.
It’s tough to tour alone. Expensive. And hard to draw the crowd you want at every stop along the way.
Get a tour buddy band! Share expenses. Share the load. And if you’re a real mastermind, team up with a band that draws a crowd in parts of the country where yours doesn’t.
Runnner and Sun June have teamed up for a November tour along the eastern seaboard, starting at Crystal Ballroom in Somerville, divebombing into the dirrrty South, finishing up in Sun June’s hometown of Austin, Texas.
Both bands have played all over the country and beyond. Where do they have the strongest draw?
You figure the latter half of the tour is Sun June territory. They’ve got to bring out the Southern hipster crowd. Runnner is based in Los Angeles and can’t really lay claim to the Northeast. But they serve up the kind of sweetly salted indie rock pablum that works in most major metropolitan areas.
One thing’s for sure. You’ve got to set aside the egos for a “dual headliner” tour. You’ve got to get along, trade secret handshakes, and look out for the interests of the other band.
You’ve got to be buddies. Like the skeleton buddies still on the wall at Crystal Ballroom with the rest of the leftover Halloween decorations.
We have documented evidence that these skeletons used to bang. Are they still bones with benefits?
Caroline Says
Speaking of band buddies, Austin-based Caroline Says must have shared a bill before with their fellow hometown band Sun June. Austin’s not that big of a town, is it?
Caroline SaysIt is. About a million residents. Most of which play indie rock.
The three-piece Caroline Says packed a lot of musicianship into three players. The meat and bones of the band is acoustic-led, folk-fried, indie rock.
But the opening song saw the bassist handling a saxophone and the drummer fielding a flute. It was an aethereal jazz instrumental projection. They could have served up the entire set in the same vein and we wouldn’t complain.
The more conventional arrangement of guitar, bass, and drum kit, though, gave fronter Caroline Sallee more room to roam in the singer-songwriter mode. Shout out to the rhythm section for demonstrating a light touch, doing just enough to put Sallee’s picking on a pedestal.
Sun June
Headliner, Part One. Sun June rolls deep. Six players?
Sun JuneThere was a backing track on the opening song. If you can’t muster up live sounds with six players, you must be composing with a marching band mindset. Enough is never enough. Bring on the late period symphony collaboration.
The first gig on the tour is a good time to iron out the kinks. Figure out what your new album Bad Dream Jaguar actually sounds like in front of a strange crowd. Might sound different than you remembered in the studio.
Shout out to Alexis Marsh, who kept the flute train rolling into the second set. She sported a saxophone too. A real jack of all trades. You wouldn’t blink if she pulled out one of those old-timey car horns that go “Ayoooga! Ayoooga! Ayoooga!”
Runnner
RunnnerHeadliner, Part Two. Like Sun June, Runnner has toured locally. The four-piece indie rock outfit played The Rockwell in March. And they rolled back into town with a new song to debut. Possibly called “Achilles’ End?”
To be honest, it sounded like frontman Noah Weinman introduced the song as “Achilles And.” And what though? The end of Achilles has a nice literary pedigree, making it a more suitable theme for music. Let’s hear what we want to hear.
Side note: shout out to the beer line that’s so long you have time to memorize the colored light rotation of the jumbo illuminated skull behind the counter: purple, red, green, blue, orange, aqua blue, back to purple again. Gah!
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