IVY BOY Cements Perry Eaton As One Of Boston’s Best Songwriters

There’s certainly a case to be made that Beeef are the best indie rock band in Boston these days—that very argument is one of their top Google hits courtesy of u/corwin on Reddit last year, and who am I to question it? I wrote about their explosively summery sophomore album BULL IN THE SHADE back in 2019, and while the pandemic put them in a several-year slumber, last year’s SOMEBODY’S FAVORITE was career-best work from the band, a shimmery collection of pop songs in the vein of Tokyo Police Club or We Are Scientists that nostalgically reached back to a more wholesome era of indie rock.

Perry Eaton, who subsequently is also the co-founder of the essential longrunning Boston music blog Allston Pudding, is back with new music under the moniker Ivy Boy. The same tuneful, springy songwriting that made Beef such an immediately joyful listen carries over on this self-titled debut, but it presents itself as a folksy mixture of the Dunedin sound and ‘70s West Coast soft rock—more Bread meets the Clean than early 2000s blogrock. There’s a thoughtful, cradling tempo to each track, from the achingly nostalgic “‘80s Babies” to the wide-eyed, string-assisted “Heavy on the Vine.” Lead single “New Walk” acts as the album’s most radio-ready cut, an infectious, uptempo guitar tune that even with its sparser production still serves as the fullest song in the collection—a listless suburban walk that could sonically be an outtake from Courtney Barnett’s later output. 

Radiating throughout the whole album is a broad sense of optimism; Eaton shifts effortlessly into the singer-songwriter role, and in doing so you can hear a surehandedness to the playing—even on the more pensive tracks. Frolicking closer “Olive and the Gibber” (which features Perry’s father Henry Eaton, who played under the name Cadillac Jack in the regional boogie rock outfit Duke and the Drivers in the mid-‘70s) closes IVY BOY on a carefree yet effervescent note, the noodling sounds of guitar and organ fading away in its final seconds to leave a smile your face. 

You can hear an early preview of IVY BOY below!