BEST BEHAVIOR KICKS OFF THEIR TOUR AT SHEA STADIUM

Brooklyn’s bad boys of garage rock known as Best Behavior, officially started off their East Coast tour at Shea Stadium after returning from Boston with their tour mates Today Junior. These four guys have been around for a bit over a year now, but what a wild journey it has been already. After they released their debut LP Good Luck Bad Karma in August of last year, they have garnered quite a hefty amount of attention and even opened for rock heavyweights like The Darkness, The Struts, TEEN, Pains of Being Pure At Heart, and Honduras, and yet they still carry a headlining spot like no other.

The show started off with a quartet of young rockers with the totally awesome name of Drug Pizza. These cynical punkers play frisky chords and spout sarcastically hilarious lyrics set to perfectly out-of-tune vocals. Their youthful take on the 90’s-heavy sound is something of a mix of Amps-era Breeders, The Muffs, and Helium, and the raw, punky riot grrrl thing really works gangbusters for them. Following that was a band called Girl Scout, who are actually all guys, but have all the attitude you’d expect. They were down a guitarist for the show, but they nonetheless rocked full-steam ahead. There were some instrument troubles early on, but by the end, they were blaring at full-on jamming speed with a great Pavement, Screaming Trees, and Dinosaur Jr. 90s-era rock revival sound mixture all their own. I think frontman Jeremy Zerbe is a better lead guitarist than he gives himself credit for, and I liked their power trio rawness, but it will be interesting to hear where their sound goes when they get another axe player, presumably by the time they release their next EP sometime in late Summer. Then it came time for Boston’s Today Junior, who have a surf-driven psychedelia sound and wacky energy on stage. They have generated a solid following in Beantown over the last few years, and it’s clear that it is well-deserved praise, as they solidly deliver a rush of swelling jams, peppy and bouncy rhythms, nimble guitar winding, and some seriously sunbaked harmonies.

Drug Pizza

Girl Scout

Today Junior

Best Behavior is a band I’ve seen many times now, and they consistently deliver the best sweat-soaked rocking sets of just about any NYC band out there. They too, have a raw garage, surf-soaked, and ’60s psychedelic sound bound together in a feel-good rock backbeat. They do however bring on some more distinct purist 60s-era comparisons with bands like The Kinks, The Ventures, The Stooges, and even MC5. As much as I love their debut from last year, this show was clearly about the new stuff. They plan on entering the studio to record a new album after this brief outing, so they clearly intend on working the new material out on the road. Sure enough, they also appear to be branching out with some more fuzzy jams and even a distorted Strokes-like catchiness that is damn well addictive.