After the Boy Harsher show at Gateway City Arts on Oct. 30, I went on a wild goose chase trying to put my press pass to use. I was sent back and forth across the room, talking to every staff member at the venue, including the ticket sales, the bartender and sound check. After getting a few shrugs and being sent off to the next person, I found the security guard. He brought me into the green room, and my real problems began.
I was told I had 10 minutes. Jae Matthews, the lead singer of the duo, sat on a couch with her friends drinking and laughing. I stood awkwardly on the other side of a coffee table trying to talk to her. A daytime barista at Northampton Coffee/nighttime DJ played ear-bursting techno in the concert room on the other side of the wall, making it nearly impossible to hear anything either of us said. Matthews was incredibly kind; she invited me to drink her handle of vodka and hang out with her crew. I was too uncomfortable to know how to react to this minor celebrity’s kindness and left before my 10 minutes were up. All I learned from my painfully awkward interaction was that she lived in Florence, was from Georgia and made a horror movie in Orange, Massachusetts, that she had performed the soundtrack of that night. Hence all the screaming in the set.
I first learned about Boy Harsher over a year ago. I was taking time off school, working at Tart Baking Co. As I washed sheet pans one afternoon, a baker told me about the bands from the DIY scene in the area. We mainly discussed the smelly dude bands that wear dirty sweatshirts. Then our attention went to Boy Harsher. A dark electropop duo that makes dance music with few words and experimental synthesizers. That day, we played their songs over and over while we kneaded bread and dried all the baking instruments of the day.
When I arrived at the concert, I was greeted by everyone I knew in the Valley. All my old Five College friends who are somehow connected to me through someone’s ex greeted me with a warm hug and a spin to show off their quickly-made Halloween costumes. I shared cigarettes and craft ciders with people I knew from work, bars, cafes and other assorted places where I had picked up names and faces. The crowd reminded me of all the people I had grown to know and love throughout my four years in the Valley and proved to me that I have created a home here.
When Boy Harsher came to the stage, I was standing three rows back in the crowd. A group of people on all sorts of drugs pushed me forward until I was turned into a barricade girl without even trying. Matthews was wearing a corset with dangling pants straps not connected to anything under an extra large blazer that came off at some point during the set. She danced and jumped around the stage. Several times during the night, she kneeled directly in front of me and screamed at the roaring crowd. Her partner, Augustus Muller, bounced around the stage with a singular drum stick in one hand and what I think was an electric rain stick in the other.
Boy Harsher’s music is the essence of losing yourself in a song or on the dancefloor. They pair repetitive lyrics (or screams) with hypnotic club beats that leave a visceral feeling in your body. Being at a Boy Harsher show is truly a full-body experience, a sensual encounter with Matthews, Muller and the crowd of people around you. You can listen to their music on Spotify through your earbuds or on a speaker, but to be face to face with Matthews, dancing in unison, is clearly how this music is meant to be heard.
I jumped and screamed and danced with my Valley roommate of four years as we watched our homegrown artist produce electronic music far beyond our comprehension. Our other roommate stood beside us and was repeatedly punched in the face by the group that turned us into barricade girls. There is something inconceivably special about performing for your own community in a place that you love, just like there is something special in realizing that you have created a home and a community in a place where you were once an outsider. I think Matthews and I got a little of both.
