Boston Calling’s underrated acts
Plus: 🛒 Why your groceries are $$$
It’s Tuesday, Boston.
☀️ Don’t be surprised if you see a lot of toes this week. After several rainy stretches, Mother Nature is gracing Boston with temps in the 80s through Friday. Let sandal season commence!
🚇 And a quick Orange Line update: Some changes were made to this week’s OL shutdown schedule. Expect shuttle buses between Oak Grove and North Station after 8:30 p.m. through Thursday night. But at least the commuter rail will be free between the two stations during that time.
👀What’s on tap today:
- Why your groceries are so expensive
- Playoffs season must go on
- A small biz for sale
Up first…
BOSTON CALLING
Under-the-radar acts
Image: Erin Clark/The Boston Globe. Illustration: Gia Orsino.
Hot take: There’s more to Boston Calling than the headliners. Each year, the festival organizers make a point to include smaller, local acts. But reading Boston Calling’s lineup can feel like taking an eye test, with the smaller acts being the hardest to see.
So to help you sniff out some new local artists, we chatted with a few who are playing this weekend to give you a vibe check on their music.
✨Divine Sweater blends retro and contemporary grooves. The five-person, close-knit band has childhood and college roots in Greater Boston. Their “dream pop, indie rock hybrid”music pulls from a mix of retro and contemporary influences like Cocteau Twins and Japanese Breakfast to create dreamy songs with vocal layering grounded in a solid groove.
✅ Vibe Check: If there were one place in Boston they’d send you to dance or cry to their music, they’d suggest you head to either the fishing pier on Castle Island and “maybe shed a single tear slowly,” or ask the DJ at Boston Bowl to play their more upbeat tunes “at like 4 a.m.”
🎶 If you want to check them out … they recommend starting with their newest song, “Deep Side.” The B-Side team also recommends “All the Way Back” and “I Knew You Better.”
⚡Billy Dean Thomas wants you to leave their set feeling energized. After being raised in NYC, Billy Dean Thomas came to Boston in 2015. With roots in composing and spoken word, their music is a “genre-bendy” combination of “rapid rapping,” plus a little rock and hip hop with inspiration from The Roots and Busta Rhymes.
✅ Vibe Check: The location of where you cry or dance to their songs is less important than the listener’s intention: The best time would be “before a real intense moment, whether it’s finals or a championship basketball game.”
🎶 If you want to check them out … they recommend listening to “Tina Turn Up” first. We also really like “Freeman” and “Valentine.”
🧜Paper Lady is going to play some “siren music.” In classic Boston fashion, Paper Lady met and formed their band at Berklee, and came up in Allston’s DIY venue scene. They’d describe their music as “dream rock” with inspirations like Big Thief and fellow Allston DIY-ers like Christian Pace.
✅ Vibe Check: They’d like you to cry or dance to their tunes under a very specific tree in Allston’s Ringer Park (a birch to the right of the playground) where lead singer Alli Raina once found a silver pendant hanging from a branch.
🎶 If you want to check them out … they recommend starting out with one of their most popular songs, “Five of Swords,” and we’d add “Starcross” and “EVE” to that rec.
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CITY
Quick & dirty headlines
Image: Erin Clark/The Boston Globe
🛒 Grocery inflation is cooling off … everywhere but here. Grocery prices are pretty much universally out of control these days. But according to the Globe, there’s a reason that Mass. has continued to feel the heat as prices have lowered in other places: Too much competition. We usually think of competition as driving prices down, but in Mass., there’s no one store with enough market share to force other stores to compete by cutting prices. Add in our high costs for energy and transportation and … voilà.
⛺ Harvard protestors have a problem with the university’s punishments. Students held a rally on Sunday calling for the school to reverse some disciplinary actions it took against students involved in the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment. Student organizers said these punishments — including forced withdrawals, being barred from graduating, and probation — do not align with their perception of the agreement they made with Harvard’s admin to peacefully end the encampment, which they thought would allow the students to graduate. Interim president Alan Garber doesn’t see it that way.
🇭🇹A Haitian cultural center will open in the North End. On Monday, the city broke ground on the Toussaint Louverture Cultural Center, named for a Haitian general. Officials hope the space will serve as both a brick-and-mortar gathering space for Boston’s Haitian community — the third largest in the U.S. — and a tourist destination for cultural education. Plus, officials say the center’s existence will be a physical embodiment of the Haitian community’s impact on Boston, which, despite its scope and longevity, goes mostly underrepresented.
🏆 Even without the Bruins, playoff season must go on. And between the Boston PWHL and the Celtics, we still have hope that at least one of our teams will win it all. On the PWHL front, Boston took the first W in the five-game final series against Minnesota for the Walter Cup 4-3, with their next game on deck tonight at 7 p.m at UMass Lowell. Meanwhile, in order to punch their ticket to the NBA Finals, the C’s will have to take down the Pacers and their elite offensive game. Their first matchup will also be tonight at 8 p.m. at TD Garden.
ONE LAST THING
A small biz for sale
Illustration: Emily Schario
Attention, budding entrepreneurs! What if we told you that, for just $35,000, you could purchase a booming, profitable business with a unique, ready-made customer base, and complete inventory? Well, we’re not exaggerating — you literally can.
The only catch: You need to know a lot about typewriters.
After a business succession plan fell through earlier this year, Tom Furrier, the owner of Cambridge Typewriter, the area’s last surviving typewriter shop, is desperate to find someone to take over the business by year’s end. But not for lack of clientele; Furrier simply wants to retire.
So if you’re a young(ish) typewriter aficionado ready to run a decades-old business with money to spare … you’re welcome.
— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario
🔠 Thanks for reading! It’s kind of the deal of the century … I wonder how pricey typewriter repair school is.
💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, The Current by Boston Seaport, for supporting local businesses and community journalism.
🏢 The results are in: Most B-Siders prioritize either pay and benefits or a good work/life balance when looking for a job. But this comment from a reader who picked WFH/Hybrid work really took the cake: “Obv I need enough cash to survive, but if I can do that on a computer lying on my couch, I want that.”
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