The Boxer Rebellion packs a punch at the Roxy

Kevin Bronson on
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Just before the Boxer Rebellion’s encore last Saturday at the Roxy, frontman Nathan Nicholson paused to invite onstage a male fan, who then beckoned his girlfriend to join him, knelt and proposed marriage. It was a rare quiet moment on a night of blaring guitar rock from supporting act We Are Augustines and the London-based headliners, but not out of place. There was love all over the room.

As much as any non-arena level band doing it on their own these days, the Boxer Rebellion have momentum. The Roxy show was the last of 13 on a U.S. tour, almost all of them sold out, supporting their third album, the Ethan Johns-produced “The Cold Still.” The quartet is the rare straight-ahead rock band to earn the KCRW seal of approval, and in another time, possibly the ’90s, the U.S.-born Nicholson and bandmates Adam Harrison, Piers Hewitt and Todd Howe would be playing stadiums.

Howe, the scruffy Aussie lead guitarist, peppered the Boxer Rebellion’s Britpop-inspired anthems – and even their ballads are anthems – with memorable guitar leads and textures while Nicholson, the leading man with the brooding good looks, roared his narratives of yearning. The Boxer Rebellion’s is not an unfamiliar formula to those who loved epic rock more than a decade ago (i.e., Catherine Wheel), but the foursome has it down. Everything surges.

New songs “Step Out of the Car” and “No Harm” earned as big a reaction as the quartet’s older favorites such as “Evacuate,” and Nicholson seemed to know he was preaching to choir. Into the crowd he went at the end, putting on an admirable display of pogoing.

We Are Augustines held up their end of the deal, too. The new band formed by singer-songwriter Billy McCarthy and bassist Eric Sanderson of NYC indie favorites Pela, tore through 40 minutes of emotional indie rock, revealing in their live set less of the loud/soft dynamic that makes their early recordings (a punkier, perhaps Irish version of the National?) so compelling.

L.A. quartet C-horse kicked off the night with a set of crunchy distaff rock that recalled Veruca Salt.