After “Late Season Kids” was recorded, the Beatings added guitar/keys player Greg Lyon for their summer tour.
“It’s great to have an extra pair of hands. It’s also given the band more energy to have a new face at rehearsal,” says Keiber.
Might Lyon become a permanent member?
“It’s our intention, unless he does something horribly out of line.”
Like turning into a complete heroin addict?
“Exactly. Or if he talks back.”
The Beatings third album, “Late Season Kids,” isn’t exactly a grandiloquent con-cept album a la “Dark Side Of The Moon.” However, there is a theme to this brilliantly bristling anthemic rock set, which will be re-leased Tuesday on singer and guitarist Cameron Keiber’s Midriff Records.
“Late Season Kids” might just be the perfect “back-to-school” record, capturing the restlessness, sadness, and frustration of the passing of long sunny days into long dark nights. Once the Beatings realized what they had in these songs, they knew the record had to be released this month.
“There’s no mistake about it. We planned this out meticulously,” says Keiber aka Eldridge Rodriguez, his musicianly alter ego. “Those themes, we caught onto early on when we were writing it, we said, ‘This has to come out before the end of the summer.’ If we released it in winter or spring, it just wouldn’t have the weight to it we wanted.”
There’s also a sub-theme of the passing of youth; after all, the Beatings have been together for a decade and are no longer a rookie band.
“We kept on doing exactly what we wanted and it’s worked for us,”
Keiber says. “Now it’s kinda cool, it’s an accomplishment that we’re
proud of.”
The Beatings
Saturday, 9 p.m.
Great Scott
1222 Comm. Ave., Boston
MBTA: Green B Line to Harvard
$9, 18+, 617-566-9014
www.greatscottboston.com