Meet Main Era: The Experimental Boston Band That Does It All
All photos courtesy of Renee Newman // @rnphoto._
It’s a Friday night at a Brinstar house show, and I’m reaching my social battery limit. It’s nearing midnight, and I whisper to my friends that we should probably leave before the final act begins their set. “Trust me, you wanna stay for Main Era,” a person in the crowd warns us. Immediately after, the audience is handed old-school red and blue 3D glasses. Raucous guitar riffs echo in the cramped basement, and the crowd instantly jumps and moshes to the shoegaze track. I realize I’ve discovered my new favorite Boston band.
Main Era consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Garrett Greaves, lead guitarist Willie Swift, bassist Jack Halberian, and Berklee College of Music student and drummer Maeve Malloy. The Boston music scene tends to be dominated by Berklee students, but the group is flourishing in the scene as a mostly Boston University-based band.
Although the band collectively performs with straight faces and serious demeanors, our interview disclosed their lighthearted personalities that shine beyond that stage. It is clear that they hold close-knit relationships with each other as they selected specific members to answer questions and uncontrollably smiled during each response.
Main Era released their first project Concrete Walls in 2021 and has since established themselves as a multifaceted, experimental quartet. The band has dipped their toes into bedroom pop, early 2000s-inspired indie-rock, and shoegaze with their latest EP Dreamer, but has now taken on a hardcore punk-rock sound with their newest single “Ant.”
Inspired by the philosophical concept of Richard Linklater’s film “Waking Life” and the sounds of Sonic Youth and Wire, the band said the angsty genre change mirrors their current music taste and life uncertainty as twenty-somethings.
The track’s chorus especially illustrates this when Greaves shouts “I don’t want to be an ant / Chewed up spit out / I want to go off track.” These lines reference a metaphorical scene in “Waking Life” that compares humans to ants as we are constantly on the move and normalize hustle culture. However, slowing down and building raw human connections are essential to experiencing a content life.
“I think that all of us since the Dreamer project have sort of entered into a little bit more existential confusion,” Swift laughed. “And I think that as we progressed, we realized that there was a lot more to write about our life experience and stuff. [Ant] is just the song that reflects the energy that we were feeling right now.”
As a Berklee student, Malloy said that being surrounded by her BU band members brings a different perspective that allows them to freely experiment. “It’s just really important to separate yourself from everyone else and not do what everyone else is doing. And I think it’s easier for these guys because they aren’t in the middle of what’s going on at Berklee and in that music realm. It’s very much just out of a place of passion and creativity and having fun.”
Main Era’s exploratory energy manifests clearly in their live performances where each set involves a particular concept, such as the aforementioned 3D glasses experience with their Instagram handles written on them. Recently, they’ve faced the audience with their backs for their performances, utilized animated voices and samples as a communication tool to transition between songs, and had Greaves play his guitar with a violin bow. The band said they gained inspiration to incorporate samples for their transitions after opening for shoegaze band They Are Gutting a Body of Water, who used a similar concept.
“It’s all part of the art, and what I’ve really enjoyed with adding the sampler to our sets is specifically the lines from ‘Waking Life,’ where ‘Ant’ was inspired from at least lyrically. I think it adds something to the song and gives that context to the people,” Malloy said. Halberian then hilariously added, “It definitely worked out because none of us really like to talk live.”
Main Era puts maximum effort into each performance, enticing the crowd to match their high energy from the start of the set and maintain it until the end. When attending a Main Era show, it is almost guaranteed that the audience will howl their lyrics and slam into one another. “[House shows] have been pretty beautiful. We’ve certainly felt a reciprocated energy, especially in the more recent shows that we’ve been playing, which we’re incredibly grateful for,” Swift said.
In the future, you can certainly expect more music from Main Era as they are full of ideas. “It kind of feels like a big transitional period for the band. There are a lot of ideas, probably enough for an album, but we’re trying not to rush into anything and let things settle and fully flush out ideas,” Malloy said. For now, you can stream their music on Spotify and Apple Music and be on the lookout for upcoming shows.