First blush

Menomena is just the kind of band that usually bypasses Music City, making a beeline for Birmingham after a quick stop-off in Louisville or Knoxville. This was their first stop in town, and we weren’t going to miss it. After a debacle of an in-store at Grimey’s that turned out surprisingly wonderful—they were over an hour late and then set up super lo-fi (the drummer even played a Cheez-It box)—we were anticipating a night of clamorous fun. The trio took the stage in costume as The Office’s Jim Halpert (an eerie resemblance), an old lady and a creepy baby. The band focused on material from their excellent album Friend and Foe, trading off singing duties and instruments. Though the songs were missing some of their more eccentric loops and studio tricks, they still sounded melodic, exuberant and appropriately rocking. Justin Harris’ honky sax added the occasional flourish and drummer Danny Seims’ controlled flailing gave the whole sound a satisfying momentum. Songs like “Rotten Hell” and “Muscle ’N Flo” made us grin with glee. Hey, maybe someday they’ll even come back.

Blood, sweat, bleeding ears

We knew things were getting off to a slow start at the Springwater on Halloween when rock o’clock rolled around and there was hardly a soul stirring, besides the door guy and a menacing bunch huddled around the pool table. But after dipping out momentarily, we returned to find the bar packed with festively disguised regulars and too-cool-for-costumes hipsters, but still no band. Elbow room was in short supply as we inched over clusters of broken glass and through a permanent haze of secondhand smoke, all the while humming along to the obligatory Halloween soundtrack of The Misfits’ horror-punk classics. Tim Chad and Sherry finally got things started. Sporting three more members than the name would suggest (including guitar hero William Tyler and familiar sideman Loney John), TC&S commanded our immediate attention with a punked-up rendition of CCR’s “Rolling on the River” (the Ike & Tina version). The group captivated with a dozen or so psychedelic, blue-eyed-soul originals, treading somewhere between the funkier side of Ween and the dirty-white-boy R&B of early J. Geils Band. Things shifted gears as The Pull the Strings Players set up to perform an X-rated puppet parody of the Peanuts’ Halloween special, “This is Some Fucked Up Shit, Charlie Brown.” Full of predictably potty-mouthed humor and scored with the original soundtrack (remixed by The Privates’ Dave Paulson), the Players had us alternately chuckling and cheering, and ended with a cameo by Alcohol Stuntman Chris Crofton as the benevolently twisted Great Pumpkin. Midnight came and went as working stiffs trickled out and the harder of core stuck around for Monotonix. This Israeli ragtag trio wasted no time in dousing their drum set with lighter fluid and setting it ablaze just before launching into an ear-bleeding, rough-and-tumble assault of primal blues and face-punching rock ’n’ roll. They whipped the crowd into an orgiastic frenzy, pummeling both us and their tattered gear with a barrage of noise, blood (yes, real blood), sweat, fire, water and danger—a much-needed element in the garage-rock revival.

LaVery cool

If Guinness World Records had a listing for the most occurrences in one night of the phrase, “I mean, I’m not a lesbian, but I’d do her,” then Amy LaVere’s Friday-night set at The Basement, part of the Americana Music Festival, would be the record-holder. (Undercover Spin agents overheard the phrase at least six or seven times.) The sultry, coquettish singer hypnotized the crowd—her prodigious skills on the upright bass and alluring sex-kitten voice were a narcotic combination. Oh, and her music’s pretty good too. LaVere was our nightcap on an evening that started at Mercy Lounge, where Buddy Miller kicked things off with a typically superb set featuring probably the best band of the festival—drummer Brady Blade, bassist Chris Donohue and keyboardist/accordionist Phil Madeira. Country star Lee Ann Womack surprised the crowd by jumping onstage for one of Miller’s tunes. Other Friday highlights included the Kane Welch Kaplin set at 3rd & Lindsley and Blue Mountain, who put on a rollicking performance at The Basement before LaVere. (Btw, did we mention how awesome LaVere was?) Saturday’s highlight was Dale Watson’s early set at Mercy Lounge. The Texas honky-tonker has it all—charm, guitar licks and a baritone voice to die for. Our favorite moment was his introduction to “Where Do You Want It?”—a song about the statement Billy Joe Shaver allegedly made before shooting some poor sap outside Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in March. “He asked him where he wanted to get shot,” Watson said of his friend Shaver. “Now that’s a kind son of a gun! How many people are that nice?” After Watson’s real-deal set, the Texas Sapphires—the final act on Saturday’s Mercy lineup—came off like a bunch of hipster honky-tonk posers, which highlighted everything we love (authentically brilliant roots artists) and hate (punk rockers recasting themselves as down-home country folk) about the Americana scene. And how about that LaVere?

They might be awesome

A sold-out crowd with no discernable demographic congregated at Exit/In Saturday night to share in their affection for veteran geek-rock outfit They Might Be Giants. We arrived to find out we’d missed most of Oppenheimer’s set, and regretted it as soon as we got a load of the Irish duo’s guitar-drenched electro-pop sound. The two sang along to prerecorded tracks chock full of hooks and vocoder melodies that made us wish we hadn’t stopped off for a beer before the show. TMBG were welcomed with a deafening roar of applause and a sea of giant orange foam fingers sporting the band’s logo. Kicking things off with the last track of this year’s The Else, the Johns Flansburgh and Linnell and their first-rate backing band focused the next two hours on material from the present decade that retained the signature quirk, brainy subject matter and nerdy humor that made them famous. They also dug into their 20-year discography for some hits of yesteryear, including “Ana Ng,” “Particle Man” and a lackluster rendition of “Instanbul (Not Constantinople).” Several audience members were especially vocal about the band’s reluctance to trot out well-worn favorites, and those audacious enough to heckle subjected themselves to Flansburgh’s witty and often humiliating rebuttals. The performance included a guest phone call from deceased former president James K. Polk, a three-minute acoustic guitar solo from guitarist Dan Miller (preceded by Flansburgh instructing the audience to flicker the venue’s giant neon “Miller Time” sign off and on throughout its duration), and a double encore that still left the bulk of the room thirsty for more.