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Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
Electronic Artist award winners Freezepop were icy cool and
dance-friendly in their synth-pop dance party, with Liz Enthusiasm as
the lead singer. |
The Liberty Hotel, the cheekily named swank locale and onetime
prison, has seen its share of characters both high and low saunter
through its stout stone walls over the years. Last night at the 24th
edition of the Boston Music Awards, it may have played host to its most
interesting rogues’ gallery yet.
For the second year in a row, the sounds of Boston’s best home-grown
talent, performing in multiple rooms in the hotel, echoed throughout the
towering rotunda. It made for an eclectic din and proved, if nothing
else, that Boston’s music scene is as diverse and vibrant as ever.
A handful of awards seemed a foregone conclusion - Dropkick Murphys’
reeling in both Artist and Live Artist of the Year showed the inherent
conflict in a show like this - you want to include the newer talent, but
you need a few bigger names for the draw.
Other
awards were doled out to the deserving live acts that turned the venue
into the best one-night showcase of Boston music the city has seen all
year. Electronic Artist winners Freezepop were icy cool and
dance-friendly in their synth-pop dance party, while Rock Artist winners
Viva Viva proved, yet again, they’re good enough at what they do that
they make me appreciate a genre I couldn’t care less about otherwise,
with a gritty blues-based bar-rock set.
Fellow Rock Artist nominees MMOSS were an eye-opening highlight,
with a set of trippy grooves that reached back to early Krautrock for
its hypnotic flute-led vibe. Elsewhere, Pop Rock nominees the Wandas won
over the crowd with a jangly Americana tunefulness, while Video of the
Year nominees Bodega Girls (playing as the Bodega Sluts) tore through a
Boston-indie-rock-hits-of-the-past set of palpable, sweaty rock energy.
The act that stole the show was Female Vocalist nominee Shea Rose,
who came mostly unbeknownst to me, and proved herself the Boston artist
most likely to make an impact on the national stage this year with a
soulful set of hip-hop inflected funk and rock, and a crack band that
showcased the vibrant singer’s star power.
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