Longtime Somerville Arts Council director Greg Jenkins has been let go after 25 years of service, as reported by The Independent on Valentine’s Day. Not everyone was feeling the love. Jenkins characterized the decision as “surprising,” which was a sentiment shared by many of the locals in the comments section of mayor Jake Wilson’s Facebook post announcing the move.
Can we reflect for a moment on what a hackneyed PR maneuver it is to drop big news at 4:54 p.m. on a Friday before a long weekend? The dismissal of a public servant who’s served with distinction for a quarter of a century needs some explanation. Instead, the news gets buried under brunch plans. The newly minted mayor’s background includes “over two decades of work in media and communications,” so he’s no unwitting naïf with regard to the timing.
Wilson campaigned on the values of accountability, communication and transparency. He roasted former mayor Katjana Ballantyne for months on the campaign trail about her failure to realize those values in local government. Now Wilson is in office with the expertise and good intentions to deliver on his promises.
How’s it going? The rationale behind the dismissal is clear as mud. Media inquiries about the move, directed to the city of Somerville, are so far redirected to the text of the mayor’s Facebook post, which reads like PR written by an AI bot short a few data centers. Cross your fingers that the Somerville Arts Council gets better, not worse, as a result of the dramatic personnel decision.
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Saturday: Say She She / Katzù Oso (The Sinclair, Cambridge)
NYC’s Nya Gazelle Brown, Sabrina Cunningham and Piya Malik combine to power the art-pop trio Say She She. There’s a full backing band in live performances, but your attention will be directed front and center to the vocal harmonies by these latter-day disco divas. The sensibility leans toward bachelorette party aesthetics. But once the low end in the bass kicks in, everyone will find their way to the dance floor. Los Angeles’ Katzù Oso, who mixes post-Chicano tradition with washed-out Toro y Moi production, opens in support.
Feb. 25: Keegan James Blood / Arthur Terembula (The Burren, Somerville)
A night of country from two new-school, left-of-center practitioners. Guitarist Keegan James Blood is a Berklee alum with a relaxed vocal delivery that makes his observations of contemporary culture go down easy. His latest single, “I Love Financing,” proves he’s no slave to the hackneyed topics of country music conversation. Whiskey, women, four-wheel drive, etc. Arthur Terembula invites us even further down the rabbit hole of guitar tradition, penning ditties that celebrate the fingerpicking of the ’20s and ’30s.
Feb. 27: Landowner / Balaclava / Rong / Dust Witch (Deep Cuts, Medford)
Landowner marks the release of its latest album, “Assumption,” with an official record release at the best music club in Medford. Deep Cuts must be putting something special in the beer, because these postpunkers from Western Massachusetts keep coming back. Or maybe it’s just the beer itself? The rest of the bill is the kind of powerhouse art-punk lineup that you’ve come to expect from Illegally Blind, the booking outfit behind the very nearly, almost always annual Fuzzstival.
Live: Facs at Deep Cuts
Facs played to a packed room at Deep Cuts on Thursday. The stage has become a comfortable stomping ground for the Chicago trio, having played there as recently as April. Which suggests, to my mind, that our local appetite for art rock remains powerful.
That’s a good thing, because Facs is one of the most compelling underground acts operating in the art-rock tradition, and deserves your time and attention. Its latest album, “Wish Defense,” cuts straight to the essence of the guitar, bass and drums vernacular, shedding excess until we are left with something like a nude self-portrait of rock ’n’ roll.
Geese, Wet Leg, Turnstile, you name it. We seem to have found ourselves in a sudden rock renaissance. After years of people complaining the genre was dead or dying, there’s a sudden optimism in the air.
Important to note – and I direct this mostly to a peanut gallery of oldheads, myself included, who like to pat themselves on the back for liking the “right” bands – that throughout rock ’n’ roll’s intermittent lean years, there persisted a special lineage whose vitality remained, if not bulletproof, then at least bullet resistant. Namely, the art-rock scene that was born on the Lower East Side of New York City during the late ’70s and early ’80s and was abrasive, urban, relentless and still wholly convinced that redemption could be found in the reverberating strings of an electric guitar. Let’s not name any names, because where would we stop?
Okay, let’s name a few names. Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Patti Smith Group, Blondie and Talking Heads. A slew of artists whose work remains vital today, inspiring generations of musicians to raise hell in their footsteps.
Somehow this cohort, despite widespread (and, in some cases, mainstream) success, never overripened with age and still hold interest for musicians in the present day. I mean, I’m a local guy who loves Aerosmith, but if a band in 2026 tells me that Steven Tyler and da Boys are their primary source of inspiration, I worry about them.
Facs belongs to that Lower East Side tradition, by way of No Wave offshoots such as Theoretical Girl and Sonic Youth, while still managing to make the legacy into something that is their own and peculiarly midwestern. Nobody knows if the current rock renaissance will survive, but I’d bet that the long arc of sound that Facs is part of will keep finding new forms of life. If you get the opportunity to see this band live, take it.
Editrix and Pew Pew, two local outfits that also know a good sound when they hear it, opened in support.
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