Listening to local band Soddy Daisy’s new album Trashtopia, it’s no surprise that they all have a hand in running legendary DIY partyplex Young Camelot, or that the album was partially recorded there. Regal and shambling, I’ve seen some of the stickiest bangers unspool in their cavernous space, all sticky with beer and humid with sweat.

YC is drunk conversations between girls in line for the bathroom, sloppy X’s on your hands, and two people almost fucking on a melting couch. It’s carpet fermented lager and a better populated smoking section than a septuagenarian’s favorite Las Vegas casino.

Trashtopia, from the name, to the cover art, to the sound evokes the bacchanalia and bad decisions, the adrenaline hype and the greyed-out nod-outs. It’s the perfect album to be born in Young Camelot’s messy womb, and I can’t imagine a better place to host the release show this Friday.

The third and forth songs on the album bring restrained lounge vibes and an bluesy growl of an intro, respectively, showing a willingness to experiment beyond the kind of partypunk oblivion I watch three different bands careen through on your average Wednesday night.

WEAK Radio uses the production trope of a scrambled scan through radio land to introduce a torchy doo wop addiction ballad that evokes blue-lit pimple-faced shuffling slow dances and a weary chanteuse draping herself across a Rhodes organ, eyelids slowly closing in resignation.

It’s an album of ambitious length for a self-recorded DIY band. The repetitive dirge When the High Subsides could have clocked in under four minutes (or found a more secure home on an album that promised less shambling and surf), but Soddy Daisy does rollicking lofi pop extraordinary well. I’m charmed with the couplet “Nothing else has ever changed, I’ve got an embryonic brain” on the sunny jammer “Water Cooler.”

Feel free to scream out the names of these songs I’ve described while they play at Young Camelot this Friday. It’s that kind of place, and that kind of band: messy, collaborative, and beautiful.

Evasive Backflip, Rat Hammer, Soddy Daisy, Not For You, Le Tour, Alex Rowney Piano Beast
Young Camelot
Fri, September 18 / $5 / not byob – bring $

There was a time when I was going to The Burlington all the time. It was winter, and the proximity to my home cut the navigation of iced-over pot-holes to a necessary minimum. The beer was cheap and the decent local punk bands played damn near every day.

Over time, though, it began wearing on me. The band I came to see would have three terrible openers, all suburban bands who’d invite their friends, screaming drunk college kids who would start inane conversations with me at the bar and leave before the headliner. Breaks between bands would drag to forty minutes. And, perhaps worst of all, the pitch black and damp of the backroom would breed a particular funky smell; the smell of your elementary school cafeteria on a rainy day, all moldering mackintosh coats and sweaty feet in rubber boots.

“Something smells like dirty Cheetos. I think it’s my feet,” the singer of Potty Mouth mused over the mic one night. “No, it always smells like that!” I called back, helpfully.

Sometimes, though, even the darkest, dirtiest dive surprises you. I saw a mind-blowing set by Meatbodies in the front bar a few months ago, a titanic explosion of thrash and squall. And sometimes the line-ups leave no room for error, like tonight’s stellar offerings.

My cute boyfriend, Tom from Dumpster Babies, did the artwork for the new Baby Magic record, so pick up some blood-red vinyl and pat him on the back on a job well done. Chill out with Patrick Cosmos DJ’ing vinyl in the front room. Get carried away on the overwhelming vocals of The Cellphones. Let Lil Tits rip your eardrums out, and lick your wounds to Swimsuit Addition’s darkwave pop. And buy me a beer.