The Hotelier + Crying

You could call it a new "revenge of the nerds," not unlike the one that already played out with the indie wave of the '90s. It's hard not to smile, with no mockery intended, at the line-up of this fine show at Arci Biko in Milan, the second of two Italian dates for The Hotelier alongside up-and-comers Crying. There's an end-of-term school dance kind of atmosphere, with acts this young and relatively unsure of themselves on stage, in a room that isn't packed but is certainly filled with a genuinely passionate crowd.

Musically explosive but fairly introverted by nature, Crying are a rising sensation with an energetic, colorful style. We at OndaRock know them well, since their recent debut "Beyond The Fleeting Gales" sat on the site's homepage for the entire month of November – modestly speaking, a rather forward-thinking editorial choice on our part. Crying's formula is an alt-pop laced with electro/prog hues, even though live they're just voice, guitar and drums, aided by a few pre-recorded backing tracks. The vocalist's casual, baggy clothes, the chubby guitarist in a polo shirt and sneakers (but above all the tool of his trade, a glittery green-bodied guitar), the sweet-eyed drummer who's extremely focused and precise: the overall picture brings to mind a kind of mash-up between the character actors of Napoleon Dynamite and the coolness of Scott Pilgrim, especially once appearances are shattered and the trio launches into vicious riffs that mix odd time signatures, shredding and stop-start breaks bordering on tech-metal.

Although live the thundering effect achieved by the album's skillful mastering is somewhat lost, the performance is engaging and technically flawless, no small feat for a band this young and on their first tour outside the United States. Their motto, after all, doesn't lie: "The power of three will set you free."

Just as the show started with Swiss-style punctuality, the changeover between stages is tight, and within ten minutes The Hotelier are ready to play. Less than a year ago, at the Covo Club in Bologna and the Astoria in Turin, the cult band's Italian debut drew a similarly sized turnout of fans, but this new stop in Milan finds them riding high off many more dates around the world, including an appearance at the Pitchfork Music Festival; the setlist is also decidedly fuller and more varied, thanks to the nostalgia-steeped songs from their latest album "Goodness" (Tiny Engines, 2016).

But this time the opening salvo – as predictable as it is meaningful for anyone who follows them – is the pairing that opens the acclaimed "Home, Like Noplace Is There", manifesto and masterpiece of the new generation of emo-punk: from the harrowing, slow-building opening to the liberating distortion, immediately picked back up in "The Scope Of All Of This Rebuilding," here in nuce is the full expressive range and songwriting quality of the Worcester, Massachusetts boys, who then double down with their small classic "Your Deep Rest" – certainly one of the reasons they became known even outside the underground circuit. Finally frontman Christian Holden's voice no longer falters, which is certainly the band's most significant achievement, since their songs so often rest on melodic singing rather than screaming.

Their most recent output, in fact, is ushered in by the lullaby "I See The Moon," ahead of the sharp strumming of "Soft Animal," the sturdier of their last two singles (though this time "Piano Player" is left out entirely). It's a real shame that from their debut album "It Never Goes Out" (released then under the name The Hotel Year) only "Weathered" is ever played, even though that first record was anything but immature and already contained a few gems ("Vacancy" and "Lonely Hearts Club" among the unmissable ones).

After a return to the second album's tracklist with "Among The Wildflowers" and the closing "Dendron," the run-up to the finale arrives with an unexpected "Opening Mail For My Grandmother," perhaps The Hotelier's most openly emotional song, and finally the anthem "Settle The Scar," sung back fervently by the front rows, who for a full hour had kept perfectly replicating every line of Holden's lyrics.

It's a Sunday night and everyone's trying to wrap things up as soon as possible, but in under two hours a comforting sense of small community has formed, the kind we usually find precisely at these small shows where rising names of independent rock meet their followers for the first time.

For their part, then, the Italian audience did them proud and showed genuine affection for a band that, in its own modest way, could even turn out to be among the future standard-bearers of our generation.

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