Mates of State To Perform at Queen’s Head

For students looking to “Graduate” from 90s band Third Eye Blind, rock duo Mates of State may help fill that void.

The band is scheduled to perform at Cambridge Queen’s Head pub on May 11 as part of an indie rock show. The performance is being organized by the College Events Board (CEB) and Campus Life Fellow John T. Drake ’06.

The concert will be free and open to all Harvard affiliates, according to a CEB press release and the board’s chair, Adam Goldenberg ’08.

Goldenberg, who is also a Crimson columnist, said that there will also be two other bands performing at the pub that night—Bishop Allen and a Harvard student band, The Sinister Turns.

Mates of State is a Connecticut-based husband-wife duo whose music is marked by “quirky, rhythmic music and their male/female vocal harmony,” according to the press release. The group spent last summer touring with Spoon and Death Cab for Cutie.

“I’ve been dropping the name for a couple days now, and either people haven’t heard of them or they’re extremely excited,” Goldenberg said. “That’s the reaction you want. As long as we have a couple hundred people who are really excited to see this group, we’re going to have a fantastic event.”

“Not everyone knows who they are, but I don’t think that anyone will hear them and not like them,” Drake added.

The CEB plans to book more performers for the pub in the near future, Goldenberg said.

Compared to Yardfest, a much bigger event aimed at the entire school, the concerts at the pub will be smaller events that appeal to niche groups of undergraduates, Goldenberg said.

“Unlike Yardfest, the luxury is that we don’t have to try to please everybody at the College,” he said.

Steven S. Rivera ’07 is one student who belongs to this Mates of State niche.

“I’m incredibly excited and will definitely be going,” he said. “I’m not really interested in a huge, mainstream performance and it’s great that they are trying to attract these smaller, closer audiences.”

—Robert J. Prior contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Aditi Banga can be reached at abanga@fas.harvard.edu.