THE PLASTIC CONSTELLATIONS: Playing D&D on stage |
Outweighed by the laid-back denim metal played by the unwashed dudes in bands like Pearls & Brass and Priestess, the Plastic Constellations’ lesser brand of jittery paranoia — shrill, strangled guitar riffs, squirmy time signatures, anxiety-laden vocals — bulks up with metal’s oldest stand-by: dragons. Writing songs about slaying fire lizards is a ritual as old as the beasts themselves, but the Constellations know their form. On “Quixote,” “battlefield becomes the stage,” and even their own instruments become mythical: “The kick drum is an earthquake, and the typhoon is the bass, and the guitars will make the earth shake.” What that makes the audience they don’t specify — maybe the water they stay hydrated with while fighting — but there’s something endearing about grown men playing D&D games on stage.
PLASTIC CONSTELLATIONS + LIVING SEA + THOSE WHO WAIT | June 22 | Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 617.864.3278
