Friday, August 14, 2009
The Spin The Brunettes at The End, 8/13/09
Posted by The Spin on Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:16 AM
Check out the slideshows for more photos: Part 1 (opening bands); Part 2 (The Brunettes).
With all the various shows going around town--from the old-timey jammy jam at Riverfront to The Ettes across town to Unknown Hinson across the street--there were a lot of choices last night. And those were all worthy choices. We hope you had fun, because sadly for you, Nashville, you missed one of the best shows to roll through our town this year. (Again.) But you wouldn't have guessed that from the early going.
Openers Oli Endless, fronted by Oli Endless, played a song called "Oli Endless Nights," and that's pretty much how it felt by the time they were halfway through their set of songs, uh, inspired by The Strokes. We thought maybe they were a cover band at first. Their set felt kind of like a freshman dorm talent show, and a dance-happy crew of friends added to that atmosphere. It was like everyone was having fun except The Spin. What else is new?
The good news is that we finally got to see an entire set by Bows and Arrows--at least a entire set where they were playing their own songs--and we found out just how overdue that was. The Murfreesboro quartet played a short but effective set of reverb-soaked indie pop that flashed with influences from the Velvets to Galaxie 500, Jesus & Mary Chain to Pixies, all delivered with a slack, cool-kid charm that had us grinning. The band sounded best when Rodrigo and Anna sang together, as they do on the on the disarmingly simple gem "Carbon," one of several songs of they played off 1010 Eaton Street. They closed with "Burn It," which seemed to explode off the stage. If these youngsters can manage to bring that kind of energy to an entire set any time soon, watch out.
Happy Birthday Amy followed with an exhausting set of theatrical, slightly dark piano-rock. We say exhausting because the band's set was all motion, from fingers flying over keys to quick-shifting bass lines to fierce, hard-bopping, jazz-inflected drums. There was hardly a moment to take a breath. Speaking of drums, all anyone around us could talk about after their set was the drummer's badass chops. Bravo.
The ridiculously charming pair of Jonathan Bree and Heather Mansfield kept the harmonic center of the sweet, sweet maelstrom--he with his droll baritone, she with her girl-group plaintiveness. Mansfield was like a Swiss army knife--switching between keyboard, glockenspiel, castanet, maraca, harmonica, tambourine and vocals.
Oh, and there was dancing! Much, much dirtier dancing than we would have expected from a group of people watching a band who had two triangles in their arsenal and at one point joked, "This is our most emo song." But dancing nonetheless.
Their cover of "Lovesong" turned The Cure classic into a duet--which made such total, awesome sense--and their new songs sounded like maybe the middle point between Belle and Sebastian and Broadcast. But comparisons are really going to fall short because, they were none other than The Brunettes, and they were pop perfection incarnate.
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