Aaron Marks, All These Kings

Review by Dave Anastasi

There's an old adage that states: If you wanna make it in the music biz, you gotta pay your dues. This usually means that, when starting out, bands might have to play somewhere on a Tuesday night in the hopes that the club sells enough booze to invite them back on a Thursday or Friday. However, taking a Tuesday night at Cambridge's T.T. The Bear's Place is not paying your dues. It is folly.

I've been attending shows at TT's for the better part of a decade now, and have performed on its stage a few times as well. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no rock band has ever sounded good at that venue. I don't know if the issue is with the room, the equipment, the engineer, or a combination of the three. I do know, however, that when more than two instruments are run through the sound system, the output becomes a big loud ball of mush. The snare and high hat generally end up being the loudest sounds in the room, the guitars are abrasively tinny, and the vocals are almost always unintelligible.

So when a promising local band like All These Kings plays a venue like TT's, it can be very difficult to see through the noise.

Brad Teitelbaum, All These Kings

This group of musicians has been together for less than a year, but already they are making some waves. They were showcased in last year's NEMO music festival , and will be testing the waters of New York City's music scene later next month. They're drawing decent crowds in the Boston area, and it's not surprising.

Their songwriting is varied and consistently good. To my ear, their sound can be compared to Foo Fighters or Cursive, and frontman Aaron Marks brings a strong blues influence to the group with his proficient guitar work.

A few selections from their demo are available online, but I get the sense that the group has outgrown those recordings. They seem more comfortable with the material now, the band is tighter, and the backing vocals of Marie Kim give the songs a more settled feel. It's unfortunate that her keyboards were inaudible for the bulk of the set-- I imagine that they add a nice contrasting texture to the guitar-driven rock.

The heavier tracks left me feeling a bit indifferent mainly due to the lack of dynamics coming from the stage. This is no doubt in part due to the club's aforementioned sound issues, but the band could certainly add a bit more subtlety to their arrangements. There's a lot of space to be explored between soft and loud.

The Jeff Buckley-inspired "Sweet Misery" was the highlight of the evening for me, as the Kings filled the club with hypnotic melancholy. They managed to keep the intensity up and the volume down, allowing each individual part to be heard clearly-- which isn't easy to do in that room.

All These Kings is certainly worth checking out, and could be one of the better local bands I've seen in awhile. We can only hope, though, that their next gig in town is at a venue that supports their music properly.