Diarrhea Planet at Bonnaroo 2014
After almost 10 years, hundreds of shows and enough guitars to stock a small Guitar Center, Diarrhea Planet is calling it quits following a trio of sold-out gigs Thursday through Saturday at Exit/In. Nashville will never be the same.
The scatological name is something the group could never escape. Dreamed up as a laugh between singer Jordan Smith and former guitarist Evan P. Donohue in their Belmont University dorm room, the name “Diarrhea Planet” was never meant to be on festival bills or at the top of marquees. It was a joke aimed at noise music very different from the kind they’d end up making — a goof that became a perpetual prank on venue managers across America.
But the name was also their secret weapon. No matter where you were when you first heard the band’s name, you couldn’t help but think, “What kind of band calls itself Diarrhea Planet?” Once you indulged your curiosity, you were hooked. If you never listened to them because of their name, you missed out on quite a lot.
It was fall 2009, my final year at Belmont University, when I first heard whisperings about a five-piece punk band with three guitar players called Diarrhea Planet. They had virtually no presence on the internet — no Facebook, no Bandcamp, not even a MySpace page — but their name buzzed through an underground network of Belmont weirdos who rejected the writers-round scene in favor of basement and warehouse shows.
Belmont was a strange place to be in the latter part of the decade. The university severed ties with the Tennessee Baptist Convention (and so the Southern Baptist Convention) in 2007, ending a 56-year partnership that chafed a school with aspirations of aggressive (and progressive) growth. Although Belmont was no longer officially a Baptist university, it still held on to conservative social conventions that were off-putting to young punks, many of whom had come to study in the school’s renowned music business or audio engineering programs.
In that space, Diarrhea Planet found its first burst of excitement. Alongside bands and artists like Spanish Candles, Reid Magette and Darla Farmer, the Belmont students who craved something beyond what Belmont was selling built their own community. Though DP would become closely identified with their compatriots on Infinity Cat once they signed to that homegrown label, the alt scene at Belmont pushed them to recognize their potential. Smeared with face paint and screaming along to lyrics like “We’d probably die tonight / If we didn’t have to fucking survive,” these audiences were the first believers in the gospel of Diarrhea Planet.
DP’s first show was an unassuming ramble-shamble, playing at The End on a bill headlined by the now mostly forgotten glam-rock band Spider Friends. Upon entry, I was handed a copy of DP’s EP Aloha, burned on a CD-R and housed in the jewel case of a bland Christian contemporary artist. Their set lasted all of roughly 20 minutes, but they pulled the entire audience onstage for a scream-singing dance party.
Smith & Co. quickly developed an ability to write cathartic hooks that bleed angst out of your body with the efficiency of the Red Cross. Early fan favorite “Ghost With a Boner” (a supremely silly title-as-lyric song, which they’d later refuse to play when audiences shouted for it, only to relent at the last moment) isn’t exactly “Let It Be.” But it sparked a primal urge, a visceral, physiological demand to sing-scream-shout along.
That would be DP’s hallmark throughout the rest of their discography, from their 2011 debut full-length Loose Jewels to their latest LP, 2016’s Turn to Gold. Beyond their grungy, fuzzy first recordings, DP’s productions grew progressively cleaner and more polished, more clearly articulating more nuanced ideas. DP jumped into Infinity Cat’s fountain of suburban disaffection, and couldn’t have fit in better alongside bands like JEFF the Brotherhood and Daddy Issues. They grew out of “Ghost With a Boner” and pushed into new, awkward maturity. Songs like “Separations” and “Life Pass” are full-throated anthems that thrive in discomfort, giving the listener permission to feel shitty and rise above it.
Even more impressive — and meaningful — than Diarrhea Planet’s ability to put on a show where the crowd surfers sometimes stacked two layers deep is the way they drew the earnest, uncomfortable fringe of their audience into the middle. The cascades of finger-tapping solos from what’s become a fleet of four guitarists are a beautiful, ridiculous spectacle, but they’re outshined by the feeling that you’re a beloved member of a raucous, hairy family, no matter what else is going on in your life. It’s the same thing I felt years earlier when I saw Against Me! at the now-defunct punk hangout The Muse, where I found myself arm in arm with strangers belting out “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong.”
What kind of band calls itself Diarrhea Planet? One that, intentionally or not, united scenes and helped people feel like they belonged — to believe in their own strengths, even when there’s pressure to conform. Given how quickly forces of change move in Nashville, that’s a resource that won’t get any less valuable anytime soon.
