Welcome to ‘Seven in Seven,’ where each week in this space we’ll be taking a look at shows coming to the region over the next week. As always, whether your musical tastes are rock and roll, jazz, heavy metal, R&B, singer-songwriter or indie, there’ll always be something to check out. Here’s seven of the best on the docket for the week of July 26:
Hana Vu – July 26 at Johnny Brenda’s
This past spring, Los-Angeles based singer-songwriter Hana Vu released her sophomore album, “Romanticism,” which aches with intimacy and mourns the impermanence of youth. The songs are both lush and loud, reminiscent of guitar-heavy late-aughts indie rock, while at the same time futuristic with layered synth bass. The music pulses with meaning and jolt with playfulness, underlining the angst and dissolution of adolescence with slick, sorrowful precision with Vu soaking up sadness in a way that has never felt so alive and makes for shows that are steeped in raw emotion.
Milly – July 27 at Union Transfer
Speaking of sophomore albums, armed with towering, surging guitar riffs and inviting hooks, alongside a newfound collaborative approach, Milly’s latest LP feels like a total reinvention. Across 10 pummeling and undeniable songs, “Your Own Becoming” finds its power in channeling your darkest thoughts into something galvanizing and productive, a document of how doubling down on art in the face of serious fear and doubt can be grounding. Thoughts like fear and doubt could have devolved into potentially overwhelming situations for main songwriter Brendan Dyer, but as he jotted down notes from his dreams and confronted his dread, he became locked on the sustaining force in his life: his band. Now on the road, everyone is laser focused on bringing the best out of each other night after night.
Beartooth – July 27 at Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course
Hot on the heels of the fully sold out, 2024 North American leg of “The Surface Tour,” which moved a career-record 78,000 tickets across 40-plus shows, gold-selling and billion-streaming hard rock outfit Beartooth are back, this time roaring into Grantville. The band’s fifth studio album, “The Surface,” was released in the fall and already has 160 million streams to date, debuting in the top slot on Billboard’s Hard Rock Albums chart. Hitting many of the secondary markets this time around, it might be the last chance to catch the group for a bit unless an encore is down the road.
10cc – July 27 at The Keswick Theatre
One of the most inventive and influential bands in the history of popular music, 10cc, is on tour for the first time in over three decades. Dubbed “The Ultimate, Ultimate Greatest Hits Tour,” it’s an obviously over the top moniker meant to reflect timeless music — leading to more than 30 million albums sold — and a testament to how 10cc’s energies were not centered on image or celebrity-status, but on creating highly sophisticated rock masterworks with mainstream appeal. Even to this day, the reverberations are being
felt. “I’m Not in Love,” released in 1975, had a second life after being prominently featured in the soundtrack to the 2014 blockbuster film, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” spawning a number one soundtrack album. Similarly, the group’s 1978 hit, “Dreadlock Holiday,” was a key element of the soundtrack to 2010’s “The Social Network.”
Flat Black – July 28 at Underground Arts and July 30 at Lovedraft’s Brewing Co.
Guitarist Jason Hook introduced his new band, Flat Black, last year, seeing the former Five Finger Death Punch member teaming up with a trio of young and talented musicians. Fresh off high energy and head-turning sets at the Welcome to Rockville and Sonic Temple festivals, the group are now on a run of headline tour dates to support their debut effort, “The Dark Side of the Brain,” hitting up the East Coast and bringing their live fire power and metallic might to a series of intimate venues, including two regionally. Sunday will see them in Philly at Underground Arts while Tuesday moves to Lovedraft’s in Mechanicsburg.
Reyna Tropical – July 30 at World Café Live
Led by guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer Fabi Reyna, Reyna Tropical bring the Congolese, Peruvian and Colombian rhythms of her debut LP “Malegría” to life on the road. It marks her transition from the duo of Reyna and Nectali “Sumohair” Diaz to Reyna’s solo project following Diaz’s passing. At once a vibrant arrival and an electrifying bridge, the record is akin to bittersweet, blending the Spanish “mal,” which means “bad,” and “alegría,” which means “happiness.” Ultimately, it’s a celebration of a wide array of cultural traditions, bringing their influences into a thematic narrative surrounding queer love, feminine sensuality, and the transformative power of intentional relations to the earth, spotlighting stories often pushed to the margins and offering them a sonic homeland.
Maserati – July 31 at Kung Fu Necktie
Formed at the edge of the new millennium, Maserati is as sleek, sophisticated, and supercharged as the legendary Italian sports car it takes its name from. It is fitting, then, that the band has dragged the glory years of psychedelic arena rock kicking and screaming into the 21st century, with the pomposity — and vocals — carefully removed. In its place are white hot flashes of light pulsing to an unstoppable rhythm that will make you want to punch air and drive really fast in a car with wings instead of doors.
Soundcheck
• Hana Vu – “Hammer”
• Milly – “Running the Madness”
• Beartooth – “I Was Alive”
• 10cc – “Not in Love”
• Flat Black – “Justice Will be Done”
• Reyna Tropical – “Lo Siento”
• Maserati – “Monoliths”
Source: Berkshire mont
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