Brighton, MA

Brighton, MA: Not just a suburb of Boston anymore.

Related Content

• Homespun: Hidden Lakes
  March 22, 2012
• Ruthlessly honest and unblinking, the poems in Jazzy Danziger's debut collection, Darkroom, shimmer on the page
  May 10, 2012
• Hidden Lakes' Model Airplanes: Review, Video and Album Stream
  March 22, 2012
• The Potomac Accord
  September 1, 2011
• Dustin Kraushaar Tallies Another Arrest Through Tallywhacking
  April 5, 2012

More About

• Brighton
• Matthew Kerstein
• Scotland Yard Gospel Choir
• Horse Racing
• Gospel Music

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Unconfirmed reports indicate that Brighton, MA frontman Matthew Kerstein ditched the well-buzzed Scotland Yard Gospel Choir because that band wasn't 1986 enough. But when indie almost-knowns pay a nostalgic visit to the Reagan era, they best bring hooks — and not just New Order midi settings. Thankfully, on its self-titled EP, Brighton, MA does just that — and more. The band (which is from Chicago) constructs a keyboard colossus and exhilarating pop single in "Bet You Never Thought" and then breaks down to the finger-picked "Good Kind of Crazy," before escalating through a jammed-out spray of mellotron, cello and trombone for "Horseracing," a climax having little to do with playing the ponies — and everything to do with the playing the thrills of rock-ensemble dynamics for all they're worth.