Photos by Charlie Baker.
“Hey,” I said, turning to my neighbor at a concert on Wednesday night, “doesn’t he look like he should be on Stranger Things?” My acquaintance smiled and nodded politely, and then went to stand elsewhere in the room.
Perhaps I was making an extraneous observation. But Test Subjects frontman Sam Glick does bear a resemblance to several members of the Netflix show’s cast. It doesn’t hurt that the bright stage lights make his bandmate, Melody English, look like a young, edgy Laura Linney. All that to say, this duo is photogenic as hell.
The music, too, is cinematic. The lyrics incorporate ideas and imagery that wouldn’t feel out of place on a movie screen, with tongue-in-cheek references to “mutants,” “tumbleweed,” and the “end of the world.” Meanwhile, the spooky samples and synths could easily soundtrack a haunted house ride.
After opener Alana Markel set the scene with Lucy Dacus-esque vocals over twee, Frankie Cosmos-style instrumentals, Test Subjects played a short headlining set at Night Club 101. Glick and English were performing with a full band for the first time. This was occasionally evident, in that they took a couple of songs to warm up, and some transitions could have benefited from more rehearsal. But other moments — booming intros, groovy bass lead-ins, dramatic vocal flourishes — were so powerful in their pizzazz and prowess that they more than made up for any teething pains.
English, the lead vocalist, has a magnetic stage presence. For one song, she twisted her voice into a scream in each chorus, while in another, she stretched out the syllables in the word “alone” in every possible direction. Unusual embellishments like these make Test Subjects stand out in a sea of otherwise indistinguishable pop rock projects. Clearly, it pays off to make experimental choices.
Speaking of the unexpected — midway through the set, Glick trotted out some astonishingly deep, gravelly vocals of his own, landing somewhere between late Leonard Cohen and Mongolian throat singing. Later on, he took a classic rock guitar solo that would have appeased dads anywhere. This band is full of surprises. 
The show got better as the night went on, with the band playing at full tilt for the last third of their set. Consequently, the end of the show felt like a cliffhanger, as the crowd sang along to the words of their 2021 song, “Interstate of Mind,” and then clamored for more after the band left the stage. Amid chants for an encore, Glick returned to the microphone to explain that the band hadn’t rehearsed any more songs. “That’s all we got,” Glick said apologetically. For now.
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