Concert Review: The Sugar Hold / The Abyssmals / Acid Dad @ No Fun, 04/20/2023

No Fun has been putting on shows for just over a year now, and in such a short time, the crew there have pulled in a lot of fantastic touring acts while also highlighting the great local music scene that has been experiencing a boom in the last few years. On Wednesday, April 20, we got tastes of both in a 4/20-themed show that saw a packed house.

Local sweethearts (and recent Nippertown March Madness co-winners) The Sugar Hold started things off by playing material from their new album Sweet which dropped that day. Mikey Baish, Dan Clark, Matt Malone, and John Olander play music made for a party, with subject matter like cheeseburgers, drinking, smoking weed, and driving a rundown car. The songs are endlessly catchy and singable, and the guys always sell it.

On Wednesday, they were also joined by two members of the local vocal group the Hold On Honeys (Emily Curro and Shannon Rafferty) for a couple of songs. Emily and Shannon sing beautiful arrangements of original and cover tunes with the Honeys, but with the Sugar Hold, they sound like a 50’s girl group, which, to these ears anyway, is a perfect complement to the material.

After the Sugar Hold brought the party, The Abyssmals kicked things into psych territory. There’s a special timeless quality to The Abyssmals’ music: it doesn’t feel “retro,” but it also sounds like it could fit nicely in the 60’s psych rock scene. Everything is drenched in reverb, and the songs wash over you (which isn’t to say that the sound is muddled; on the contrary, every instrument was clearly audible in the room).

All the folks who make up the Abyssmals are excellent and bring the overall sound to life as a unit, but I would be remiss in not mentioning Jarpon and Muffy Reyes specifically. Jarpon (also a member of the AMs and Flavour) is the primary lyricist and singer for the band and is also responsible for the distinct visual style used in their album art and social media presence. Muffy is a force of nature on stage, even when standing relatively still. On Wednesday, she donned a muscle suit under her regular clothes and revealed it partway into the set, which the packed crowd loved.

After the local sets wrapped up, Acid Dad took the stage for an extended set of their psych jams. The band is an unconventional three-piece consisting of two singer-guitarists (Vaughn Hunt and Sean Fahey) and a drummer (Trevor Mustoe). For many bands, the lack of a bass player might be a detriment to the overall sounds, but with Acid Dad, you’d be forgiven for not noticing. In addition to the excellent music, the band brought a visual element, projecting fittingly abstract and psychedelic visuals. Because of the layout of the venue and the stage, the projected visuals fell on the back wall, the stage itself, and the backs of the assembled crowd, creating an immersive environment.

As a relative newcomer to the scene and to the city of Troy, I was pleased to see so many of the wonderful folks I’ve been honored to get to know over the past couple of years, and between the great bands, the great crowd, the excellent folks at No Fun (all firmly ensconced in the local music scene as individuals) and a pop-up from Albany restaurant Wizard Burger (who crafted delicious vegan burgers named after the bands for the occasion), what could have been just another excellent local show became a real community event.