MUSIC: GNaRDS and Secret Lover at the Firehouse

Friday, April 04, 2014

Jenny Pacillo, GoLocalWorcester Lifestyle Contributor

Usually when I get out of work, my first and only order of business is to get home for my nightly Law and Order SVU marathon. Case after case flickers over my laptop as I drift off into a peaceful sleep while, filled with dreams of cracking cases with Detective Stabler and heart to hearts over wine with Detective Benson. Last night however, I broke my usual routine and hauled myself to the Firehouse collective to catch one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time.

Worcester bands Secret Lover and GNäRDS opened for New Jersey trio Screaming Females, and the Fat Creeps from Boston shredded everyone’s faces off too. Fat Creeps and Screaming Females were great, but I think that GNäRDS and Secret Lover are highly underrated and deserve way more attention than they are being given. Plus I’m a Worcester xenophobe, so I don’t give one care about anything or anyone outside city limits.

Secret Lover mixes low fi garage rock with spooky psychedelic pop that is impossible not to dance to. I have been to roughly one million shows at this point, and I would put singer Sally Horowitz’s stage presence in the top ten. I’m hesitant to use the word “campy” because of the negative connotation, but she reminds me of Macaulay Culkin’s best friend from “My Girl” mixed with one of the delinquents from “Cry Baby”, or any other number of John Waters characters. Horowitz is so engaging, she never stops moving, and by the second song everyone in the crowd was dancing too. Dave Paquette appeared to be daydreaming while he killed it on the drums, and guitarists John Guida and Lars Paulson helped on backup vocals.

Aside from putting on a great show, Secret Lover reps Worcester hard with songs “St. John’s Cemetery” and “West Boylston”. When Horowitz pumps her fist in the air and advises, “If you want to take a day trip, cruise the West Boylston strip”, you almost believe that the Army Navy store and Meola’s ice cream would be fun for more than one hour tops. Secret Lover has three albums available on Band Camp, where you can also find their upcoming shows, including two in Boston this month.

Peter Camerato started GNäRDS with friends Abdul Sherzai and Jamie Buckmaster less than a year ago, but they already sound like they’ve been together forever. Guitarist/singer Peter Camerato describes his band as “gnardcore junk rock”, which I will translate to “slightly heavy garage rock” for all the non-hipsters out there. Nearly half their songs were instrumental, which isn’t something I normally like, but they pulled it off. Sherzai was fun to watch on bass, and Buckmaster was relentless on the drums.

GNäRDS will be taking a break for the next month while Sherzai wraps up his semester at UMass Amherst, but they plan on going full steam this summer to promote their first record that’s due out in May. Basically, GNäRDS will make you want to put on your oldest tee shirt and rattiest pair of Converses so you can go pound crappy beers behind your friend’s garage while you talk about how much school stinks and other problems of this nature.

Secret Lover and GNäRDS go perfectly together, they both have great energy and a vintage sound that makes it impossible to stand still. By the time I got home last night, I was too tuckered out from the excitement of the show to watch SVU. It felt strange to fall asleep without gunfire or intense interrogations, but spending my nights watching awesome Worcester bands is definitely something I could get used to.

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