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Triple-header
Friday night, The Cannery gave us all a little more bang for our buck than usual, offering up three of Nashville’s hardest-working rock bands on a triple-headlining bill. It was around 9:30 before The Pink Spiders greeted the early-bird crowd, who had the Cannery filled to less than a quarter of its capacity. With their sleazy, razor-sharp punk-pop flavor in full roar, singer/guitarist Matt Friction & Co. delightted a group of hardcore fans and friends with an evenhanded survey of their last two records and a few new tracks from their forthcoming Sweat It Out. The Spiders ended and as their constituents trickled out, an entirely new congregation replaced them up front. Decked out in their famous rhinestone regalia, De Novo Dahl kicked off their CD release with their rejected cover of the Speed Racer theme, working up a sweat in record time with the front row in full-on dance party mode. The band focused mainly on songs from their newest, Move Every Muscle, Make Every Sound. Shying away from the more experimental elements of their previous work, DND have become a well-oiled, organ-driven, melody-heavy, rock ’n’ roll party machine. The Dahls did grace us with a handful of older tracks and rounded out the set with a badass rendition of Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks.” Filling the final slot in this unholy trinity was Music City’s most recent major label fiasco, AutoVaughn, who were celebrating the release of their new EP, The Cycles. Again, a whole new crew of fans swapped places to hear AutoVaughn’s radio-friendly alterna-rock jams. The band’s slightly angular approach often prompts comparisons to new wave bands of the ’80s, but sounded to us like it owed a little more to second wave acts like The Killers than Ultravox or Joy Division. Either way, there was no denying their effortless delivery and easily decipherable lyrics. Once AutoVaughn had ended, the party was far from over. Upstairs at Mercy Lounge, an afterparty was already in full swing. DJ Gumby filled the silence during that first awkward hour, but the dance party didn’t quite bloom until local prodigious electro duo Jensen Sportag took the reigns. Their fractured club beats and eerie electro-pop melodies had bodies moving and speakers thumping with maximum efficiency. Following up around 1 a.m. was the allegedly final performance from novelty club act Spring Hill Spider Party. As is typical of a Spider Party show, a small but incredibly rowdy mob remained on the dance floor, determined to get their final fill of the group’s absurdist techno spectacle right on up until last call.

Japanic at the Disco Japanther

BYOB.O.
Had we known it would be around 10:45 before Wizardz would get things started at Springwater Sunday night, we wouldn’t have shown up until a bit later. Better late than never, the gentlemen who normally comprise 3/5 of JEFF and Meemaw combined forces as Wizardz to crank out some greasy, full throttle, psychedelic, muscle-bound punk rock. For a Sunday night, the boys brought out a crowd that was impressive in size and disorder. Folks were thrashing about with reckless abandon while the band cycled through extended instrumental jams that occasionally offered some gang-vocal interludes. While the lyrics weren’t quite decipherable, song titles such as “Sexual Reality” and “Sexual Galaxy” gave us plenty to contemplate. The room thinned out considerably by the time The Pharmacy followed up. Staffed with just a drummer, keyboardist and singer/guitarist, this Seattle trio dealt out a bouncy mix of piano and guitar pop at a deafening volume. The tunes were short and sweet with catchy choruses that wavered in and out of key, the whole ordeal lasting just under 20 minutes. Most everyone had filtered out by the end of set, save for a quartet of ladies working the dance floor like there was no tomorrow, but they all came flooding back in just in time for New York duo Japanther. Armed with two men on bass guitar and drums, Japanther bounded through a couple dozen sloppy breakneck pop-punk jams along to barely audible backing tracks. The songs were usually introduced with random voice samples that sounded like they were taped off TV, and the dueling lead vocals were sung through a pair of telephone headsets converted into microphones. The longer the band played, the rowdier the room got, dancing, shoving and showering each other in beer and sweat. It wasn’t long until the air achieved Springwater’s trademark toxicity—a savage combination of body heat, cigarette smoke and a combination B.O./spilled-beer funk that had our eyes watering, our nostrils singeing and our feet carrying us toward fresh air around the time the band had reached their last song.

Intestinal Fortitude Pow Shadowz

Positively Fourth Avenue
By the time we made it out to The Rutledge Saturday night for Combined Visions’ Ice Cold Hip Hop night, we were in a pretty shitty mood—which totally changed when we walked in the door. Have you been to a hip-hop show at The Rutledge yet? It sounds phe-fucking-nomenal. We’ve seen DJ Kidsmeal a million times in a million rooms, but we have never heard the technical mastery of his crab-scratch cut through the mix so well. Generally, rap shows at rock clubs sound terrible, with muddy, overdriven bass that obscures the vocals, but this isn’t the case at The Rutledge. The low-end frequencies still tickled our intestines but we could hear everything the MCs were spitting, and it warmed our audiophile souls. It might have been better if we couldn’t hear what Evansville, Ind., rapper Cas-One had to say, because, well, we already own that Atmosphere album and we didn’t like it that much the first time around. DJ Dubla, AkoyAk and Jingo B bent our brains with their fast, tri-vocal flows, which might have been too heavy and verbose for most of the punters to follow, but still got the club cranking. The Kidsmeal/Wick-it The Instigator turntable tag team was just what you would think it would be—awesome. The boys exhibited an obscene amount of taste and skills that elevated the event to full-on hanging-from-the-rafters party status. Pow Shadowz’s more aggressive, roughneck set seemed like a letdown, but his intense persona was still enthralling. As we drove home that night, all we could think about was the inadequacy of our car stereo, and how we couldn’t wait for the next hip-hop show on Fourth Avenue.

Plastic Clap, now Spring Hill Spider Party—where did all the ironic dance bands go? Tell us at thespin@nashvillescene.com.