Lightin' up
Thursday night at Exit/In marked the third time we've seen Phosphorescent play in as many years, and we have to say that Matthew Houck and company put on a hell of show. We rarely have the attention span to handle — look, a bird! — paying attention to even our favoritest artists (maybe we listen to boring music), but we managed to pay attention for an entire set. Houck is one seriously gangly dude with some seriously gangly charisma, and when you combine that with a Willie Nelson fetish and — look, another bird! — a seriously rocking band, we were almost focused for more than a moment at a time. You wanna go ride bikes?
Wait, no, we were talking about something. ... Oh, yeah, Phosphorescent. Good band, good dudes — who thankfully got all $40,000 of their stolen gear miraculously recovered just days ago — who were definitely tighter and more, uh, focused than that time we saw them play at The Boro Bar & Grill. And there was more breathing room than at their Next Big Nashville performance at The End last year. When Houck brought up opener Caitlin Rose for a pair of duets — including Willie Nelson's "Too Sick to Pray" — we began wondering how long it's going to be before the dude buys a house in Franklin and starts writing songs about flip-flops. We could totally be into the idea of seeing dude around town, making mailbox money and generally just hanging out.
Caitlin Rose, by the way, played another excellent set. If you haven't seen her with her band lately, do yourself a favor. That outfit has become one fluid unit, and watching them work is really a pleasure. (Side note: Can we get Jordan Caress and Glossary's Bingham Barnes on the same stage for a bass-off? We're thinking it'd be so deep they'd have to hire James Cameron and his army of pressure-proof robots to film it. Just a thought.) We missed most of Doug Paisley's solo acoustic set because, well, Luke "From Character" Schneider was regaling us with stories from his road trip to see The Features on the West Coast. Let's just say that stories about Landon Donovan and Bob Odenkirk and booze and models are way more interesting than softly strummed Canadian songs. But overall, an awesome low-key kind of night that made us very happy to be The Spin.
Multiple Migs
If our Friday Night was a Tumblr blog, it would've been named Fuck Yeah Friday Night!!! — though frankly, there aren't enough exclamation points on the Internet to illustrate how much we enjoyed Miguel Migs at Mai.
Our evening might have started in the worst possible of all worst possible places — having "dinner" with the Spin-laws at the Arby's in La Vergne — but by the time our night was over, we were in such a good mood you'd have never known that our soul had been this close to getting crushed. Migs, his deep West Coast house music and a few hours of nonstop ass-shaking were the perfect restorative after a long week and an even longer "dinner." Fuck Yeah Friday Night!
Not that everything was wavy gravy on Friday night. Oh no, we and our dance partners had some serious, serious arguing to do before Migs took over — do we boogie down in the main room to openers Tony Callaghan and Mindub, and their killer, upbeat house sounds, or do we get down and dirty to the burly dubstep of Squake and Core in the side room? There are definitely worse problems to have — be thankful, Nashville, that there is a wellspring of talent behind the turntables in this town. We found a solution, though: starting tabs at both bars! Double high-fives to all the locals for keeping us excited and indecisive all night.
We didn't really get to watch much of the infamous Dr. Wicklestein and his genre-bending, convention-flouting approach to the womp-womp-womp, but what we caught was tight as hell. Also, we plan on leaving the house at some point this week, which pretty much guarantees we'll catch Wick-it — or "The Lone Maverick of the Apocalypse," as he may or may not be calling himself these days — again soon. Plus, how in the hell are we going to miss the man, the myth, the legend Miguel Migs when he's in the same building? Soulful, song-fueled dance music is our jam, and there are few folks that keep it funkier and more fluid than Migs. Once he jumped on the tables it was like the whole world melted away.
There might have been other people on the dance floor, there might not have been — as far as we remember it was just the beat and our feet, moving like we were trying to make up for every show we've ever spent mean-mugging with our arms crossed at the back of the bar. The problem with great dance music is that it's bad for note-taking, so we can't tell you what Migs played besides the all-time super-duper-extra classic "Venus" by Cheek ("Sunshine people, sunshine people, we are!") and that a short Italian dude (like Italian-from-Italy, not Italian-from-Jersey Italian) was having way more fun than we thought humanly possible. And then at some point the music was over and we were in a cab on our ride home, sweaty, drunk and stoked. Fuck yeah, Friday night!
Death comedy drum
Saturday was a night not unlike so many other nights where The Spin, like many Spins before it, found itself at a rock show not unlike a great many rock shows before that. In a manner of speaking — and saying nothing short of the obvious — this was not The Spin's first rodeo. But then, glancing about the modestly populated standing space at The End, was it anyone's? Surely not. We all knew what we were doing, what we were in for, and, as usual, that was all right for everyone involved.
Though we missed opening act The Cannomen, we did manage what could be considered perfect timing in catching Huntsville, Ala.'s Thomas Function from start to finish. The Heart of Dixie has given us few worthwhile exports in recent years but T-Func pick up more than their share of the slack, bashing out effortless assaults of accessible, melodic riffs that are so obviously and undeniably good, it makes you wonder why it's so hard for other bands to do the same.
Next up, 'Bama's neighbor to the west was represented by Mississippi's Bass Drum of Death. A name like that evoked any number of characteristics in The Spin's reeling imagination — deep and dirty electro groans, perhaps. Or maybe a didgeridoo-fueled percussion orgy fronted by a full-on gravel-voiced death metal crooner decked out in Juggalo face paint. Both sadly and fortunately, BDOD is none of those things. Instead we got a booming drum and trashy guitar garage-punk duo slinging the kind of tough teen pop even old codgers like us can sink our teeth into.
Local '77 street punk purist Cy Barkley stepped up next. Not unlike the Cannomen, Cy too has received his share of the Scene's supportive ink, starting way back with his first show at last year's Next Big Nashville Infinity Cat showcase. The biggest difference between that show and this one is that Cy has a record to promote. Unfortunately, though, the Scene hasn't heard it, so maybe Cy needs to send over a copy in order for us to say some more nice things about him.
Paul is dead. For a full refund, email thespin@nashvillescene.com.
