I.  STREIGHTANGULAR is the best band ever. The first time I was supposed to meet Albert Polk—his name was still Alexis back then—I got stood up. We were supposed to see Comets on Fire at the Middle East, but Al had been banned the night before for putting a sticker on one of the club’s projectors. About a year later, several bands dropped off the bill on a dreadful house show in Allston. I called Al—never having met him in person—and invited him to play. In an hour. Straight Angular arrived, literally dripping with posters, stickers, busted microphone stands, ill-tuned guitars, casio keyboards—the stuff of DIY. Since then, I have seen approximately 435646 Streightangular gigs, from strange yoga studios in Union Square to strange house parties in Lowell. I saw them play in a kitchen once, but I’m not totally convinced that actually happened.

The music of Str8angular is pop at its finest—the melodies shine through the decidedly low-fi, stripped down, minimalist arrangements and stick in your head. But that statement, uttered by countless audience members after dozens of Stupangular shows is where the art of Spectangular takes over. This is the music of freedom. We’re lulled in by these referential and comfortable melodies and then slapped in the face by the gaping void of modern existence. Take the surrealistic tragicomedy of Empathetic Environmentalist: Success is based on progress / schematics based on schemes / empathetic environmentalist, you love to dream big dreams which fills out with a suppressed, disappointed All this information means shit. And the trickster offers his answer, a conundrum: All you ever need to know lies in the heart of a suffering fox / who loves the man who loves to feed the bears. All you ever need to know, a simple truth of existence, stuck in the heart of the suffering fox, which is to say that this one thing, this one secret, the one truth worth knowing will be forever inaccessible. Except to Albert. If Boston has a rock and roll scene—Al Polk is its prophet, somewhere between Tim Carey and Moses. Boston’s Greatest Lover.

Open your eyes, let the light shine in: