It seemed fitting for local rockers Honest Thomas to fire through their Feb. 28 set at afterHOURS in a wash of red light. After all, the mostly hardcore four-piece brought an ominous change of pace from opening act Down to Ascend, a solid Haverhill alternative rock outfit whose performance was pleasantly nostalgic of the ’90s.
Apparently unfazed by the past decade, Ascend summoned the sounds of Toad the Wet Sprocket, Nirvana and the Gin Blossoms for a set that felt at once cinematic and familiar.
Passion Pit, the night’s second act, was a veritable carnival of sound, packing the stage with a spate of synthesizers to churn out one ecstatic electro-pop opus after another.
So when Honest Thomas took the stage at the Tastemakers-sponsored concert, they also took the crowd by surprise with a change in sound. It added to the audience’s shock that halfway through the first song, “Sweet Jane,” keyboard player Mike Forst left his post to repeatedly pummel an unsuspecting audience member. The audience member was fine, and after the show, soft-spoken Forst politely apologized for his impromptu assault.
Combining soaring vocals with throaty screams, soothing arpeggios with aggressive guitar riffs and poetic silences with relentless bursts of noise, Honest Thomas showed off a dynamic range that kept all eyes on their hands and faces, not least because the band’s energy was so brazen and unpredictable.
Still, the crowd diminished steadily from about 40 to 15 people throughout the night. Instead of letting up, Honest Thomas used the extra space to spread out – lead singer Robert Preston rolled up his sleeves and took his hat off to let out a thick mess of dreadlocks, while the quartet debuted new tracks like “Payment Plan.”
Preston’s voice played captivating tricks all night, wavering from something heard before – a clear descendant of Brandon Boyd or Aaron Weiss – to one haunted and unfamiliar, struggling to express something bigger and louder. And the members of Honest Thomas went big and loud whenever they could, without forgoing dramatic nuances like spoken-word breakdowns and delicate moments of near-silence.
Borrowing from the funky, intergalactic sensibilities of Incubus and the dark, theatrical habits of mewithoutYou, Honest Thomas’ effort was essentially heroic, not subsiding even after the crowd had diminished to a fraction of its original size.
“What really stuck out to me was how huge the sound was with guitar and bass working together,” said Sean McDermott, a middler music industry major. “I thought that was outstanding – that’s really hard to do … to get a gigantic sound like that.”
Cambridge-based Passion Pit put forth a colorful set of inventive pop songs like “Sleepy Head,” and their crowded stage, covered in cords and effects pedals, thrived on an energy different from Honest Thomas’. Passion Pit’s set was a party complete with confetti. With all those voices and synthesizers working together in a joyful harmony reminiscent of French outfit Phoenix, it was hard not to dance – impossible, maybe.
Down to Ascend thrummed out a soundtrack-like set, showing off their technical skills. For the band, the mood seemed more important than anything, a refreshing musical humility.
“The combination of bands was eclectic,” McDermott said. “That works, though, because for [Tastemakers], a music magazine, it’s good to have variety. They got a lot of different crowds, and the ones that stuck around stuck around.”
