Art-on
We arrived at the Billups Art Gallery for their Fall Harvest Celebration real, real early. Not just "early for us" as in "we missed it all," but early, like, 20-minutes-before-the-doors-opened early—the freakin' sun was out. We ain't seen the sun in ages! It's weird and bright and shiny and shit! It kicked off one of the most pleasant, low-key evenings we've had in a while.

For the unaware, Billups Art Gallery resides in the space that was formerly Gallery East, tucked behind Beyond the Edge and Drifters off Woodland in East Nasty. The room itself hasn't changed much—it's still a room with walls and stuff hanging on said walls—you know, a gallery—but the vibe is more straight bohemian than the boho-chic/urban flair of its previous tenants. It's still a nice space with a chill vibe, though we will admit that the full-sized chairs surrounding the half-height tables gave things an absurd, Through the Looking Glass feel that kept our feeble brains giggling longer than they should.

We also managed to smash our shins against said tables a few times, but that has less to do with the venue and everything to do with our complete and utter lack of physical grace.

Arriving early afforded us plenty of time to check out the visual art (and an order of smoked sausage nachos from Drifters, natch) and while we might not know a lot about art we do know what we like, and we really dug "The Visitor" by Higgins Bond. It's basically a painting of a werewolf-gargoyle thing frolicking across a barren, icy landscape while Jupiter rises on the horizon, volcanoes explode and a flying saucer blasts off in the distance. That's art. (Suck it, Monet.)

The evening's first musical act was A Slight Breeze, a new ambient duo that shows a lot of potential, though that potential would increase exponentially if the drums got kicked to the curb. Don't ruin our Tangerine Dreams with Sigur Rós drums, please. One of the great things about ambient music is that it's not grounded—it's ethereal and spacious and isn't encumbered by the burden of time-keeping. Adding drums to the haunting synth washes just harshes the mellow, moving the music to the post-rock territory that made the first half of this decade so painfully boring. We like A Slight Breeze, but they're a lot more exciting without the boom-boom-thud—more Vangelis and less Valley of the Giants, if you catch our drift.

New local rapper MC Griz hosted the evening, and by his own admission he's only been rapping for less than a year, but he shows promise with his affable and off kilter rhyme style. Griz did a rap-deconstruction of the Sunday school classic "This Little Light of Mine," which reminded us of Beat Happening/Dub Narcotic Sound System honcho Calvin Johnson, before ceding the stage to Spoken Nerd.

We haven't seen Nerd in a hot minute, which means we were bombarded with new material since the dude puts out like eight bazillion records a year. The newer material from his upcoming Apocalypse Awareness Day album has—and this is gonna sound weird—more twee-pop influence shining through his already confounding Libertarian-Christian art-rap shenanigans. (We're pretty sure there was one verse that managed to interpolate Bright Eyes and reference Urge Overkill's "Positive Bleeding.") Overall, the new sounds that Spoken Nerd is incorporating these days make for a disarming and enjoyable evolution.

Hipster as folk
After getting our asses kicked by Monotonix last weekend, we were looking for something a little more chilled out and a little less likely to dangle from the balcony and steal our beer, and Sea Wolf's return to Nashville with fellow folk-rockers Port O'Brien and Sara Lov at Exit/In on Saturday was as close as we could get without going to The Bluebird.

In true Spin fashion, we arrived just in time to see opener Sara Lov say good night and hear R. Kelly fade in over the P.A. as she started to break down her gear. It wasn't exactly what we expected to hear before a band that essentially takes some of the good parts of Modest Mouse and plays them with acoustic instruments. That is, until we realized that we had stepped into a jackpot of hipster stereotypes: Ironic Top 40 music? Check. A girl with a Polaroid camera flinging photos at the bands? Check. Someone double-fisting liquor and a latte from Café Coco? You got it. Beards? Do you even need to ask? Some asshole scribbling in a Moleskine journal? Uh, yeah. That may or may not have been us. (Spin for the win?)

Port O'Brien took the stage as the Black Eyed Peas' latest crime against art, "Boom Boom Pow," was ending, and turned in a surprisingly entertaining set of enthusiastic, psyched-out folk-rock. The L.A. band pulled most of their setlist from their recent release Threadbare, an album that dispensed with the nautical obsession of their first two albums in favor of a spookier, more atmospheric sound. Or, at least, that's how it sounds on the album. Live, the feeling was completely different. On the title track, singer/banjo player Cambria Goodwin sings a couple of sweet, lilting verses before the whole thing plunges into a folk wall of sound experiment.

We are suckers for well-executed crowd-participation—not the "We can't hear you screaming at the top of your lungs for more" arena rock bullshit, but actually engaging the audience. Port O'Brien asked the crowd to pull battered pots and pans out of a box near the stage to wail on for their last song, and because they had built a lot of good will by being charmingly self-deprecating throughout their set, people actually uncrossed their arms, put down their drinks and banged along like they were 6 years old. That's a hell of a feat, considering this is Nashville we're talking about.

Sea Wolf took the stage around 11 p.m. for a surprise-free set of folk jams. Aside from a few technical problems (the band circling back to pick up a false-started verse or the occasional feedback screech) their live set more or less sounded exactly like their recorded material—complete with wind organ on "Winter Windows" and a small tack piano. Alex Church & Co. blew through most of their recent White Water, White Bloom, including Church performing "Orion & Dog" by himself during the encore. A few tracks off Leaves in the River ("Black Leaf Falls" and "Black Dirt") and one from the EP also found their way into the set, but no sight of their painfully mediocre Twilight song.

By the end of the night, we were pretty well contented. No, Sea Wolf didn't blow our minds with rock 'n' roll antics, but they did put on a live performance that was enjoyable in a vaguely inoffensive way. Sea Wolf manages to play intimately narrative folk music without being swallowed up in narcissism like so many Saddle Creek bands of similar stock. That said, if we could splice the entertainment value of Port O'Brien with the earnest folk savvy of Sea Wolf, that's a band we'd pay to see over and over again.

In-Dented
Due to an impromptu Monday road trip (Metropolis, Ill., holla!), The Spin made it back on Monday night just in time to see Dent May at The End. Not sure why we're specifying "just in time," because we were milling about bored out the gourd for at least another half hour before openers The Kingston Springs popped up on stage. The youngish-looking rote rock band was not good enough to enjoy, but not bad enough to offend. We spoke to at least one patron bailing out on the evening, citing fatigue and aggressive mediocrity. You see kids, there's a tiered system of stage performance types, ranging from the "Stand There and Do Nothing" to the "Smugly Ostentatious High-Camp Baroque." The trick is to nail it somewhere in the middle. No one likes boring.

To The Only Good thing About the '40s, some advice: Shorten the name. We would probably tell our friends that your band is good if it involved saying fewer than 10 syllables. You were the next level up in stage presence, as you inspired us to stand up and toe tap and smile and bob along.

Craving a breath of smoky air, we stepped outside to be greeted by the new outdoor snack bar. Um, yes please. We munched on a hot ham and cheese sample, and can only imagine how many shivering smokers will be comforted by this genius idea in the cold winter months to come. Dee-effing-licious.

We moseyed back in, and Dent May and his band of sitcom character lookalikes at long last made us glad we'd waited out the boredom. Equipped with his standard ukulele and a catalogue of upbeat story songs, May managed to strike the perfect balance of kitschy self-awareness without coming off as smarmy.

Ukulele feedback attempts and bass-drum jumping were measured by quips about making sure to end the show at a decent hour, as his audience likely had to go home and finish writing their essays. Highlights like the ever-so-true "You Can't Force a Dance Party" and a cover of Prince's "When You Were Mine" pleased the too-small crowd of obviously loyal fans, and even inspired a boy-boy couple to perform a quick (unforced) tango on the dance floor.

May ended up fulfilling nearly all of The Spin's exhaustive criteria for what should be right about music: good melodies, pleasant vocal harmonies, catchy songs and endearing stage presence. And we don't even like the ukulele.

"Kiai! / We will never go to school / 'Cause it's not so nice / It's just so bizarre place / We just wanna eat pizza!" Email thespin@nashvillescene.com.