Mountainous Titts
Thursday night was one of both pride and shame at The Mercy Lounge—pride in that we were treated to an exceptional lineup of local talent, and shame in that, in true Nashville fashion, there were only 30 people there to bear witness. Luckily, those who did make it out proved energetic enough to inspire maximum performance. First out of the gate were Shoot the Mountain, who have jettisoned their old moniker, The Jigsaw Mountain Boys, along with most of their cow punk leanings, in favor of a new sound that is a glorious conflation of styles—balancing an airtight, dancy rhythm section against guitar parts that recall influences as wide-ranging as Tom Verlaine and Steve Cropper. The band captivated us with a set of songs that were jovial and infectious, with melodies that are still bouncing around in our heads days later. The best-kept secret in Nashville. Up next were The Titts, who were playing their final show with Chad before instituting a name change. For those of us who still remember what rock 'n' roll is supposed to sound like, the set was a fist-pumping shout-along, featuring all the neo-'70s pastiche we've come to know and love from our beloved Illinois transplants: punishing pentatonic riffs, pounding lead-footed drums and lyrical subjects ranging from drunken debauchery to Jesus Christ's member. Complete with high kicks, leaps off the bass drum and cocksure covers of "Helter Skelter" and "Kick out the Jams." Emotions were running high as the set came to a close, with the band smashing their guitars upon the stage—much to the chagrin of Mercy staffers who had just finished renovations days earlier. (The club looks great, by the way.) The Clutters have more than proven themselves many times over in this town and deserved to be playing for more people at the end of the night. Still, they powered through a barrage of raucous garage rock and menacing dirges, channeling all the glory of a Nuggets box set through blood-and-guts guitar slinging, sopping wet Wurlitzer flourishes and nasal vocals that fell somewhere between Billy Childish and Cameo. By night's end we had discovered a new local treasure, reaffirmed our faith in an old one and witnessed the rebirth of another as The Titts bid farewell to a founding member and changed their name to...The Tits.

It's like Yngwie Malmsteen, just less douchey
We went into the Richard Lloyd show at The End with remarkably low expectations. One of the occupational hazards of being a scum-sucking music critic, besides the inevitable threat of violence from perturbed blog commenters, is that you're going to see your heroes of bygone eras play painfully crappy revival shows to empty rooms. It just happens, like thunderstorms and locust swarms, and usually we just grin, bear it and wait patiently for the show to finish while guzzling enough booze to wipe the whole event from our memory. Luckily, we didn't have to resort to extreme alcohol abuse when the former guitarist for punk legends Television came through town this time—we knew we were there to watch the dude lay down some mean guitar licks and we didn't care about anything else. It was like a Joe Satriani show, except that instead of Zubaz pants, mullets and Guitar Center jobs the crowd was all bedhead, tight pants and master's degrees in post-Marxist literary theory. Lloyd's set was heavy on blistering guitar work and Jimi Hendrix covers, featuring the kind of instrumental dexterity that makes us slack-jawed in wonderment. We have the pleasure of living in a town where you can't take a dump with out shitting on an amazing guitarist's shoes, and Lloyd blew every last one of them away. The man's six-string slaughter was simply amazing, and—mercifully—his set was short on singing. Every time Lloyd opened his mouth we were reminded that he's old enough to be our dad. But then, our dad can't wail on the whammy bar like that, and his singing is even worse. So we decided to quit kvetching and wallow in the awesomeness on a Sunday night.

Bleeding nurse junk

We didn't realize just how early Noise Night would get started Sunday night at Springwater—around 6 o'clock—so our apologies to Aether Jag and God Willing. But we did catch French-based Tiny Concepts, a one-woman project of delicate guitar loops and soft vocals. Quiet and sparse, Concepts was essentially the opposite of the set that followed: Bleeding Wound's total amplifier worship shook the tinsel at the back of the Springwater stage with pure volume. Leslie Keffer and Val Martino offered an ethereal wash of ambient textures that lacked the quasi-danceability of Martino's Unicorn Hard-On project but sounded gorgeous all the same. The normally well-mannered blues of Yr Cut of the Trust was more unhinged than usual, which set the tone for Taiwan Deth, who delivered as a duo one of the best sets we've seen from them in a long time. The Healthy Home's ragtag ensemble of backing members made for a few false starts and last-minute stage directions, but that didn't stand in the way of a fiery performance from frontman Nate Dodd. Bad Friend played what was possibly their last show, though we hope it wasn't—probably the best we've seen from them as well. Thus was the long lead-up to the touring duo, beginning with West Virginia's Social Junk, who, along with Big Nurse, will soon relocate to Oakland. Opening with a soft, melodic bed of manipulated vocals and synthesizers, the Junk shattered that calm with a blast of drums and screams that made our skin crawl. At that point Bleeding Wound/Bad Friend member Sean Collins leaned over to say, "You know how people ask, 'How do you know when noise music is good?' You just know." He said some other stuff, but we couldn't actually hear. Big Nurse's homecoming was a throwback to the old days, consisting simply of the four members who started the band back in Murfreesboro. So it was like 2004 all over again, with two deafening psychedelic freak-outs. The first was the band's bread and butter—an opening guitar line set the tone for a hell-spawned jam band as the pulse of the song rose and fell, eventually trailing off into oblivion. The second song went straight for the jugular, full-throttled and fast as possible. Hopefully we won't have to wait two more years to do this again, and hopefully those shitty amps will get just as loud.

Preloved Toth
Grimey's is always careful not to shelve those baskets full of "preloved" promo CDs—the ones audiophiles would easily jump at—too early. But for the handful of grazers prowling the record store's aisles Monday night for James Jackson Toth's kick-off show for his solo debut Waiting in Vain—one night before its official street date—it was a pre-release free-for-all. "No one can say Grimey's can't stick it to the man," said Toth. Though it was only a brief five-song session, Toth's garage-band renditions of "Doreen" and "Look in on Me" gave listeners a taste of what his demos must have sounded like. And he even pulled the iTunes-exclusive song "Hallucination" out of his back pocket for a rare run-through, prompting Toth to mutter, "Anyone from Clear Channel?" Bare and off-the-cuff, this was the songwriter at his most vulnerable, yet still dead-on.

What is The Spin coming to? What with all the tits and the junk and the whatnot. Set us straight at thespin@nashvillescene.com.