Ascent of Everest
As The Spin's closest pal recently put it, The High Watt is "like The End, but it doesn’t smell like a latrine.” OK, rad. There’s something to be said for lowered expectations, but with a solid lineup of heady, intellectual post-rockers, The Spin was prepared for nothing less than having our consciousness blown at the Watt on Sunday night. And really, it was, minus the fact that hardly anyone showed up to share in the cerebral shredding. When The Spin first arrived shortly after 8 p.m., the parking lot was packed, and for a moment it appeared as if it was going to get pretty asses-to-elbows rowdy. But dreams were shattered when we realized a large church group was meeting downstairs. Where were you, Nashville techie mega-nerds? Was there a video game released on Sunday night that The Spin was unaware of? Surely you weren’t gettin’ your Jesus on downstairs while we were upstairs drinking beer and getting mind-fucked.
Regardless of attendance, the local staples and Louisville natives brought a pungent stank of profound hallucinatory riffage. Openers Old Baby delivered the best act of the evening by means of indie supergroup freshness thanks to Jonathan Glen Wood on guitar and vocals, Evan Patterson from Young Widows on guitar and backing vocals, Drew Osborn of Your Black Star and Workers on drums, Neal Arghabright on synthesizer and Todd Cook of Shipping News and Slint on bass. Unlike Parlour and Shedding, Old Baby takes on post-rock in a less spacey, more dirty-cowboy way — as proven with the union of their song “Pale as Man” with a projector playing footage of old Westerns and horses. There have been times in which the concept of a projector has failed The Spin (think back about 10 years ago during the height of cheesy post-hardcore bands), but Old Baby pulls it off nicely — minus one projection at the beginning of their set that looked a little like a Windows Media Player background.
