Chris Arnott: Small CT clubs can lead to an oasis of indie pop in a summer filled with classic rock

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways

The big touring extravaganzas that lump together several chart-topping acts from the ‘60s – or ‘70s or ‘80s or ‘90s – that rule the outdoor arenas at this time of year are all well and good, but they hardly make you feel with it. Those are familiar sounds from familiar voices that wafted through radios or were covered by prom bands at another time of life.

Where are the acts that point toward the future? That conjure up images of youth because they’re actually young? That create trends or help build new musical movements or simply catch the vibe of the moment?

It’s not something you can look for too deeply at this time of year, a season of good-time jams, classic hits, summer singles and amphitheater spectacles.

AdvertisementAdvertisement#_R_93ckr8lb2mav5ubsddbH1_ iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#_R_h3ckr8lb2mav5ubsddbH1_ iframe

It’s a seasonal thing. Indie pop is largely made by and for college-age audiences, so it doesn’t make sense for those bands to tour when schools are out and they don’t know if fans will show up. Happily, some adventurous souls tour anyway, and small clubs are there to support them no matter what month it is.

Darker, deeper, more trenchantly emotional shows typically happening in the darker months is a phenomenon well known to college English majors who learn that literary moods can be easily identified by the seasons in which the stories take place: Birth and romance in springtime, airy adventures in summer and tragedy or rough revelations in fall and winter.

In June, a delightful Philadelphia band called 2nd Grade turned up at Space Ballroom in Hamden. For those in the know, this was as exciting an event as The Beach Boys playing at Foxwoods that same week. Featuring the songs and sweetly shaky voice of Peter Gill, 2nd Grade has the same sunny day, lonely room wistfulness and childlike innocence of classic Beach Boys songs with a twee edge.

Remarkably, 2nd Grade had never played Connecticut before the Space Ballroom show despite having been a band for seven years and four albums, including an awesome reworking of the debut album “Wish You Were Here Tour.” Even more remarkably, 2nd Grade made its Connecticut debut in June rather than a more appropriate month like September. The band doesn’t just have a school reference as a name, many of its songs appear to be about actually being in the second grade. Gill sings giddily yet soberly about riding a bike, making friends and even getting held back from entering third grade. This is music for students staring out classroom windows.

AdvertisementAdvertisement#_R_abckr8lb2mav5ubsddbH1_ iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#_R_ibckr8lb2mav5ubsddbH1_ iframe

Gill was a beguiling presence, breaking into an in-place trot when singing a lyric about running around on a sunny day. Rather than doing the front-and-center frontman things, he led the band from the side of the stage. Unassuming, amiable attitudes were the overriding style of the evening. The opening act, Hartford’s own Carey, was as casual and cool as it was talented, melding sweetly into a precious pop melange. Carey’s first album, “Stunted,” was released in March. It has a haunting, ethereal sound that it is nonetheless hopeful and friendly. “Stunted” is being sold on Bandcamp with a bonus handstitched art-collage lyric book.

Gill from 2nd Grade was also the guitarist for the headlining band that night, Friendship. It’s a timeworn indie trope that bands that share members often travel together as an economical move. Friendship and 2nd Grade may have Gill in common, but otherwise strike different moods. Friendship, defined by the deep brooding vocals and poetic intellectual lyrics of Dan Wriggins, is downcast, where 2nd Grade is upbeat. Gill behaves differently onstage in each band, smiling brightly when performing his own songs and staring at his shoes with quiet intensity when performing Wriggins’.

The night felt like a weird time warp. The show was in the Space Ballroom’s smaller front room. It was a sultry night and the doors to the outside smoking area were open. Nobody was smoking, it was just a comfy outside deck-type area within clear listening distance of the show. It was still light outside for much of the show. Seeing sensitive withdrawn indie acts at the height of the super-rock season felt weird, but also felt so good.

There’s still another month or more before the fall semester starts and college-friendly, modern, new-sounding bands start coming out in force, changing the whole vibe of venues like Infinity Music Hall in Hartford, College Street Music Hall in New Haven and FTC in Fairfield.

AdvertisementAdvertisement#_R_bjckr8lb2mav5ubsddbH1_ iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#_R_jjckr8lb2mav5ubsddbH1_ iframe

For now, if you want to duplicate the 2nd Grade in summertime experience (without, of course, the bands actually sounding alike) check what’s going on at Space Ballroom. The self-described “ugly pop” band Skating Polly is there Aug. 4 with Minneapolis “bug rock” riot grrl band Bugsy and Connecticut’s own Cat Crash. New Haven’s Cafe Nine, still earning its decades-old nickname as “the musician’s living room” and a great place to catch young singer/songwriters. On Aug. 3, it features an alternative folk or anti-folk gathering featuring three Connecticut bands — New Haven’s Post Valley Green, Hartford’s Ashtray Angel and Ledyard’s Believe It, It’s Easy — plus the Michigan anarcho-folk act Propolis.

Infinity Music Hall Hartford has one of the most iconic indie bands of the past 20 years, The Mountain Goats, coming on Aug. 8. The Mountain Goats are a vehicle for the slow groaning expressions of dark, deadpan vocalist John Darnielle. The band has such a sizable cult that it’s really too big to be a cult. There was even a podcast called “I Only Listen to The Mountain Goat,” which had one of the creators of “Welcome to Night Vale” conversing with Darnielle as if The Mountain Goats were the only band that mattered.

The Kate in Old Saybrook is overstuffed with tribute acts from ABBA, to Springsteen, to Bee Gees these days, not to mention party-minded R&B and Zydeco bands, but is has made a little room for sultrier, more intimate artists like singer/songwriter Griffin House lately. Tinsley Ellis, a sublime blues artist in his late 1960s who has recently recorded the first acoustic guitar album of his long career, is at The Kate on Aug. 17, definitely an autumnal booking happening a few months before the leaves turn brown.

There’s also Hypefest on Sept. 7 at The Webster in Hartford, an annual local indie music event fittingly billed as an “end of summer hip-hop festival” and a lovely bridge into cooler-months club music. The Hypefest acts are treading new paths, adjusting big ideas to reasonable resources, developing their music in digestible pieces for close-at-hand audiences.

There are plenty of other small clubs that exist in the shadows of the arenas and amphitheaters at this time of year. The trick is remembering that they’re there and making a point of finding them amid all the hurly burly of the big rock shows. Make the effort.