The Pity Party made me smile. The first time I smiled in a week. By their last song, the duo had worked themselves up to a pounding doom. A  fist of red hair hammered the keyboard. It actually took her a minute to realize her bandmate had stopped playing and left the stage. Their power to pull such a dark, heavy curtain over simple chords repeating over and over, so devastated, so overwhelmed—made me feel warm and jolly. Doom x Doom = Joy. That’s math.

The Happy Hollows don’t devastate to amuse. They are pure, stamina, and enthusiasm, changing time, working fingers, and in Sarah Negahdari’s case, several counts of whiplash. Negahdari embodied a homecoming queen—her chest resplendent with glitter. She’d choke up on the mic thanking the audience with I love YOU ALL’s. She flailed and screeched while Charlie Mahoney’s fingers wove spider webs around his bass strings. Before the rhythm and before the melody came the sound’s impact. Like a bully’s push it was. The Happy Hollows’ first crunch made my skin shake. The songs loudly proceeded, carving a funnel of love and slipping along its smooth slope to fun house heaven.

Everyone craned their necks when Negahdari finally indulged some finger-tapping neck-work. The second best moment was Mahoney’s singing “Labyrinth.” Specifically, the way his head moves to the sides of his microphone as he sings, “Left turn, right turn, left turn, right turn…” Another fine moment came when three sorceresses appeared on stage to howl (sorceresses, because the new album is called Spells; a curvy stick leaned against the wall). They were joined by a drunk friend who kept trying to grab the mic and say something like: “Wait ah minute(hiccup)—Let me tell yoo sumfthin—I—love yoo(flashes boobs).” They wouldn’t let her get that far. They were good witches.

—Daiana Feuer