Preserving the Live Experience with Boston College's Photo Negative
For Photo Negative, a local band based at Boston College, it is the rush of live performing that motivates them to make music. Photo Negative embodies the trope of a college band, their story seeming to connect back to their college experience at every turn. The whimsicality of how they were formed, how they create their songs and how they perform live, all give them a natural likability and accessibility that great college bands always seem to have. Their natural likability also stems from the individuals within the band, and how each member uniquely blends talents and sounds with each other. The bassist, Nicky Straub, a sophomore who also plays the cello and guitar, brings a huge wealth of knowledge about music and music theory to the band. Matty Hogan, a junior, sings, plays guitar and produces all the band's songs. Ben Crandall, a sophomore, plays rhythm guitar and sings. Both Matty and Ben play guitar and sing, but have very different styles that blend spectacularly to create Photo Negative’s sound.
“While Ben and I both play guitar and both sing, he and I have very different styles that I think go well together. I am very loud and have a lot of energy, which is one style, while Ben is very smooth and gets into the groove, and fills up the sound really well,” Matty explains
Nicky added, “Best way I can explain it is that Matty has that great alternative, lead tone, and face melting solos, and Ben does the more jangly, folk stuff. You can hear when the two of them are playing together, they compliment each other really well.”
Drummer Éamon Laughlin, a junior, pulls complex yet perfectly fitting drum beats seemingly out of thin air. Not to mention taking on the load for all album cover design and photoshop needs the band may have. Ben and Matty both call Nicky and Éamon “Mr. One Take” because they will rarely ever need a second take in the studio. Éamon brings another different yet complementary sound to the band with influences like “The Black Keys.” Finally, the band features Stephen Ventura, a junior, on the saxophone for live shows to add another funky layer to their live sound.
Photo Negative formally formed when Ben and Nicky met Matty at Boston College’s Music Guild. At the time, Matty and Éamon had another band amazingly named Tough Lettuce, but after two spots opened up, Ben and Nicky joined and Photo Negative’s hard rocking and groovy sound was created soon after.
The topic of band names was a perfect segway into discussing Photo Negative’s single, “NBN,” which is currently featured on “The Sound of Boston College” Spotify playlist. “NBN” actually stands for “New Band Name” which became a running gag for the band over the long quarantine while trying desperately to settle on a band name.
“We started to spam our band group chat with new band name ideas. Like new band name, “Quicksilver,” or new band name, “Tobaogan Sunrise,” or other random shit. Eventually we started abbreviating it to “NBN.” So we would say, “NBN Mint,” or “NBN Poker at Breakfast.” At one point Ben threw out “Photo Negative’’ and after all those months and an eleven page google doc of all the names we’d complied, we finally settled on Photo Negative”
For the recording of their more recent stuff, the band has access to a brand new recording studio at Boston College that guitarist and vocalist Matty conveniently manages. The equipment allows the band to really play around and improvise. For NBN, they ad-libbed a lot of the recording, including Matty’s face melting solo, in which they had a different solo written before recording, but changed it up and made it better on the fly. Even when performing live, the band will change up the lyrics to NBN when performing, making it a band anthem of sorts.
“I think NBN is a great representation of what we do. We just jam, and if it sounds cool, we will write it down quickly, and two weeks later we are in the studio,” Nicky says.
The live experience is a huge part of the foundation for Photo Negative, seemingly the main reason the band exists. Photo Negative lives to play live and get to play around and improvise on stage. They are able to create a great bounce and rhythm with their music that intrinsically gets the crowd going and feeds into the dynamic nature of their live performances.
“We can create a really dynamic energy on stage because it’s not just me singing or me soloing on every song. Like with NBN, Ben and I go line for line, and the energy shifts from Ben’s guitar, to my guitar, to heavy baseline, everything changes up. Instead of having your singer, your solar, your bass and your drums, it’s very shared and the energy changes from song to song.”
Photo Negative loves the live experience so much, that they have not let the pandemic stop them from playing shows and doing what they love. Matty, Nicky, and Ben are all on the board of The Music Guild at Boston College, and therefore have the unique opportunity of making shows happen and giving themselves and their friends a platform to play live. In fact, they have now put on three live, outdoor, and safe shows on campus at Boston College during the pandemic.
“When we put on a show, we aren't just putting on a show for our band. At the last show we put on, we had four singer songwriters, and four bands, and it was a full six hour live music event. We are lucky to have the power through The Music Guild to make shows happen,” Nicky says.
Photo Negative is not just another run of the mill college rock band that messes around and plays some shows every once and a while. They are a band with an energetic stage presence, a unique and hard-rocking sound, and a deep knowledge and appreciation for music. Most of all, they are a band that has gone out and done a genuine service for the community at Boston College by organizing these live music events for lots of bands and artists starving to play live music again, and even more kids desperate to hear live music again. Hopefully Photo Negative will be back to playing packed, smoaky, sweaty house shows by the end of this year but during the pandemic Photo Negative have still found a way to bring amazing live music to their community.