LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: Boy Harsher in Boston, MA (09.27.26)
Funny enough, I found Boy Harsher the same way a lot of people probably do now, by accident. I was driving back from a wedding shoot a while back, deep in a Nine Inch Nails playlist, when the algorithm drifted into something that sounded adjacent and dropped “Pain” into the mix. That beat alone had me sitting up in my seat, and then the vocals came in and I genuinely didn’t know what I’d stumbled into. I spent the rest of that hour and a half drive in a total tunnel vision, just that one song and whatever came after it on repeat. Say what you want about streaming algorithms, but that kind of discovery, the artist you’d never have found any other way, is one of the real upsides.
Walking into Royale, I already knew what kind of crowd I was in for. Full goth regalia, head to toe, and the room was as packed as I’ve ever seen it there. Had to be sold out. Getting anywhere near the front wasn’t happening, people weren’t exactly in a letting me through mood, so I settled in around the middle of the floor. Honestly it worked out. The whole room went dark well before anyone actually appeared on stage, fog machines running for what felt like a full minute before either of them stepped into it, so by the time Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller were actually visible it looked less like two people walking out and more like they’d just materialized out of the haze. That’s apparently their whole thing, and I get why now.
Matthews and Muller met in film school in Savannah and started out as a spoken word project before it turned into something you could dance to. They’re based in Northampton now, not far from here, and they run their own label out of that same DIY instinct. This show landed on the Heartbreak Tour, behind Get Mean, their first full album in four years, written in the aftermath of real heartbreak and grief. They’ve spent the years in between scoring their own horror short and are apparently deep into their first feature film now, so the theatrical, almost minimalist instinct behind this whole show, two people, a wall of gear, and barely any set dressing beyond light and smoke, isn’t an accident. It’s the entire aesthetic they’ve built their name on.
The second “Ronny” started, the room let out a roar and just started moving. Matthews had a mic in hand and was working the whole stage, powerful voice, no hesitation, stepping side to side through the fog the way she apparently always has. Muller stayed right at her side, buried in his gear, and you could feel both of them locked into making sure this was a real night for everyone in that room. “Electric” came up surprisingly early, and it’s one I’ve loved for a while, so hearing it that soon in the set caught me off guard in the best way. “Fate” followed, one of the older, moodier cuts, all loneliness and low light, before “Coming Home” and then “Jeans,” a brand new one off Get Mean getting one of its first real workouts in front of a packed Boston crowd.
That whole stretch is also when the two of them really showed what this band actually is up close. Just two people and a stage full of equipment, Muller working the kit and the mix at the same time, Matthews doing the same with her own vocals live, both of them sculpting the sound in real time instead of just playing it back. “Break Me” kept that same tension climbing, and somewhere around “Tears” I noticed this instrument that looked almost like a piece of chain link fencing, and whatever it actually was, it put out this rattling, scraping distortion that pulled me straight back to early Nine Inch Nails, that same raw, hands on noise making. Loved it. “Bleed” followed right after, and by then the room had fully surrendered.
“LA” and “Come Closer” pulled the set back toward their older, more club leaning material, and the slower stretches in there had the whole room in a trance, everyone just watching Matthews move across the stage, even in the parts where she wasn’t singing a word. What genuinely surprised me most was how few phones came out. Even during the songs I’d have expected everyone to record, “LA,” “Come Closer,” and later “Faulty,” people would lift a phone for a few seconds and then just put it away and go back to watching. Most of the shots I got of the crowd were people locked in, moving, not glued to a screen. That almost never happens anymore. “Faulty” ran straight into “Tough Luck (When You Don’t Call)” and then “Modulations” to close the main set, and the momentum never once dipped through any of it.
By the time the encore hit, “Hard Beat” into “Pain,” it was clear why this band has become as big as they have in the underground. Those two songs alone could carry a whole set. Matthews took a second to say how good it was to be back in Massachusetts, storm and rain outside and all, especially given this is actually home turf for them. Short setlist overall, barely over an hour, and the band didn’t come on until around 9:30 on a night most of that room probably had work the next morning, but nobody in there seemed to care. Worth every bit of the lost sleep.
Photos – Boy Harsher at Royale in Boston, MA on September 27th:
