Savoir-faire

You can always tell the specter of South by Southwest is looming over us when random Pitchforkable indie bands start trickling into town on their way to Austin. We arrived on Elliston Place and waded through a sea of metalcore fans outside Exit/In, expecting to cross the street catch and catch And The Relatives laying down some Pavement-style jams. Burned again by The End's MySpace page, we were instead witness to a somewhat crippled Flora Shakespeare.

The band struggled through a semi-acoustic set, missing a legit drummer, a piano and the bassist's shoes. They would've been better off ditching the percussion entirely instead of leaving it in the hands of a guy who admits he's not a drummer. But not by much. We got the feeling Flora Shakespeare might be a good band in another context, but this wasn't it.

We wanted to pay attention to Mon Khmer, we really did — the minimalist brooding space-rock we peeped online was interesting enough to get us out our door and into The End's at a reasonable hour, but we hadn't counted on the drunken disturbance that awaited. Midway through the band's first song, a fellow who was clearly blitzed out of his mind lumbered onto the floor and held our attention hostage. The crowd backed up a good 10 feet to give him and his one-man slow-motion mosh-pit dance moves some space. He occasionally lurched into the audience to pull someone into a clumsy waltz before slumping onto the edge of the stage to catch a second wind. By the time Mon Khmer was closing their set with a surprisingly spot-on cover of "Do It Again" by Steely Dan, three bystanders were carrying the dude out the door and we realized we had basically missed Mon Khmer's whole show. Sorry, dudes.

With a name like Savoir Adore, we were half expecting something sprung from the loins of the "Look at This Fucking Hipster" blog. We weren't entirely wrong, seeing as singer/keyboardist Deidre Muro was sporting a big keffiyeh-looking thing, but we let that slide when they started playing. Savoir Adore's songs sprawl across genres like an octopus on a propaganda poster. "Bodies" comes off like an Architecture in Helsinki B-side; "The Wooded Forest" was like Modest Mouse with a disco beat, while others recalled indie-osyncrasies more akin to Broken Social Scene and Belle and Sebastian. Not every band can pull off that kind of rock 'n' roll schizophrenia, but Savoir Adore manage it pretty deftly.

On the other hand, we're still trying to feel out the new De Novo Dahl. There are glimmers of the in-your-face pop hooks of the old band, and their inclusion of "Be Your Man" in their sets is a welcome reminder of the past. But with three keyboards (two keyboards and an omnichord, whatever), three guitars, two drummers and a lone bassist, you could literally draw a line down the middle of the stage and come out with two full bands. The songs sound good, for sure, but we wonder if they really need that much force.

After frontman Joel J. Dahl broke a string on the first song, the band filled the time with a description of their Full Deck Project — 54 songs released weekly for a year — which sounds like a lot of work. We've always known De Novo Dahl to be an ambitious band, and we hope they find their footing as the rock music Voltron that Joel described them as in last month's "10 artists to watch" cover story, because nine is a lot of robot lions to join together.

Punk's not dead, it's freakin'

Once upon a time, The Spin wasn't quite so old. In fact, we too were once acne-speckled youngsters just looking to puff on a doobie, down a few cups of keg beer and get rowdy in a mosh pit before curfew. It was a healthy, tightly knit, fun-lovin' punk scene that makes us a little weepy-eyed when we think about it — not unlike the one around these parts, into which we poke our grizzled head from time to time.

These kids are onto good and big things, as evidenced by this weekend's three-day, three-venue DIY rock 'n' roll fest, dubbed the "Freakin' Weekend." Fueled by kegs and housed in the rumpus room of an unlikely Green Hills McMansion, night one's kickoff party was light on content but heavy on spirit. The entertainment portion was more like a three-act Little Rascals punk revue. The first band, Larry David and the Hipsters, was composed of Nashville's Dead blog proprietors Dee Dee and Forever Young on guitar and drums. They banged out three slapdash noise-rock ditties based on or inspired by traditional Jewish themes, and that was that.

A dance party intermission followed, which lasted about a song and a half — it was promptly interrupted when the two returned to the stage, this time as the second band, Ben Steine's Money. Switching instruments and sporting a couple Wayne's World-inspired wigs, the two belted out about 15 minutes of metal-tinged power punk with a jam-packed room of youths chanting along. After a smoke break/three-song dance party, the two returned yet again. This time, they were armed with bass and guitar, with Seth from Natural Child on drums, calling themselves Millions of Dead Punks. It was another short, sweet set of fast, simple three-chord fun.

And then JEFF the Brotherhood played. Of course JEFF played. They were the evening's special guest, but surely we've Spun enough JEFF shows that you know how that sounded: loud, stoned, primal, and occasionally a little poppy. We'll be the first to admit that with such an interesting lineup over the course of the weekend, it's a damn shame we only made it to what was probably the least eventful night of this thing.

Muse somebody

For 90-odd minutes Monday night at Bridgestone Arena, Muse gave a crash course in Arena Rock 101, at a time when such education is so direly needed. What started with many asking how Muse became big enough to play a venue that size ended with several thousand people wondering how they ever fit themselves into Mercy Lounge to see the same band years ago. LED walls leftover from the Vertigo tour? Check. Lasers? Check. Tommy Lee's rising, spinning drum riser? Check. Giant confetti-filled balls on loan from the Flaming Lips? Check. Mid-set acoustic/piano break? Check. Audience sing-alongs? Check plus. The only missing elements were an inflatable pig and Freddie Mercury in a leotard, but at least that leaves them somewhere to go next time.

While Muse borrowed liberally from the U2 playbook, right down to Matt Bellamy's Rattle and Hum audience spotlight, they learned their lessons from playing on Bono's spaceship and managed to artfully avoid getting eclipsed by their own stage. This was largely due to the quality of the songs, drawn fairly evenly from their last three uniformly excellent LPs and delivered with the kind of precision not seen since Rush last played Starwood. Bellamy has firmly established himself as a modern guitar hero, and he weaved his virtuosity into the compositions themselves instead of extended solos/audience smoke breaks. In this show though, such excursions might have been welcome — after witnessing note-perfect recreations of "Supermassive Black Hole" and "Hysteria" (complete with a "Back In Black" coda), you almost wanted to see what Bellamy could do when cut loose from his own compositions. But in Nashville of all places, that kind of restraint has to be commended.

A few years ago, it was hard to imagine Muse reaching arena status in the States, but they've solved the dilemma of becoming mainstream in the digital age. By taking a nation of niche audiences, and appealing to all of them — from metalheads waiting for "Stockholm Syndrome" to Radiohead fans who fell for "New Born," they managed to launch a magnificently overblown arena tour playing prog-rock to teenagers and twentysomethings. And that, more than the heat generated from the massive light show, warmed our geeky musical heart.

Gassin' up the Spinmobile, Austin.

Email thespin@nashvillescene.com.