Gloom Girl MFG at The East Room
Summertime Saturday nights in Nashville are so full of events that it’s torment to choose, especially when great musical acts are scheduled head to head. On this rainy and humid Saturday, there were indeed several options, including Waxed and Soot’s split 10-inch release party with Brian Brown. But I was headed to The East Room for the Gloom Girl MFG show featuring openers from Chattanooga — Open and Havoc — and Nashville’s Invitation Global.
I was on a mission to see if Gloom Girl MFG lived up to the hype. In recent features in Spin and the Scene, writers noted enthusiastic praise from Basement and Grimey’s co-owner Mike Grimes himself when the band played New Faces Nite at The Basement last year; as the group recalled to Spin, Grimes took the mic to announce, “Ladies and gentlemen, you just saw the future of Nashville rock ’n’ roll.” Wary of grand pronouncements like that one, I had my judgment reserved in my pocket until I could see for myself.
Fresh-faced Chattanooga band Open was first up, with The East Room at a quarter of capacity, although it swelled to two-thirds as the night went on. With their neon “OPEN” sign switched on and their hats in place — a beret, a trucker cap and a hunting cap with earflaps turned up — the trio announced the rules of an Open show, the first two being, “You do not talk about Open.”
Their website calls their music a “liminal indie-punk sound they refer to as Shoegazi.” This description intrigued and amused me when I read it before the show, and I think it’s a perfect fit. The trio has a unique configuration of two bass guitarists and a drummer, and their songs included masterful tempo changes and dynamic shifts. At times the vocals reminded me of the French Kicks, and other times of Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman, supported by a shimmering shoegaze guitar sound that I call “watery.” My companion’s impression of Open was as though Interpol was collaborating with …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. That’s fair, though Open’s sound reminded me most forcibly of Deafheaven’s Infinite Granite. Open’s second full-length album Late will be released later this month, and I’ll definitely be nabbing a copy.
Havoc, the second Chattanooga band, was also a trio, consisting of the more conventional guitar, bass and drums. However, their sound was anything but conventional, and initially I had trouble establishing points of reference for what I was hearing. My companion, whose ear is quite refined, picked out that they opened with a cover of Link Wray’s “Rumble” — if you don’t know it by name, you’ve heard it in Pulp Fiction — although played way heavier than the original and far from straight-up. During the rest of the set, Havoc touched on several different recognizable punk and punk-adjacent styles: surf punk, pop punk, hardcore, sludgy rock ’n’ roll and metal, without committing to any one of them. A bluesy surf-punk song might have a metal breakdown with roaring vocals, for instance, and it kept the audience on their toes. The only commonality among the songs was that they were fast and loud — their handle on most social media is, appropriately, @havocisloud — and their manically animated guitarist jumped, kneeled and head-banged in stocking feet while providing the hot licks.
Invitation Global at The East Room
Nashville’s Invitation Global was next. They’re a six-piece with two drummers, two guitarists (including Ghostfinger’s Richie Kirkpatrick), a bassist and a keyboardist with a Farfisa organ. On some songs, they were augmented by a trio of singers, too. That’s a lot going on, and in the psychedelic-tinged garage-rock jam that ensued, the keyboard was frequently drowned out. While tightly timed, the performance was a bit unfocused. Alternating shouty vocals with almost inaudible speech between songs, wild-eyed frontman Cameron Reiss Wilson displayed excellent guitar work. It’s clear that all the players in Invitation are great musicians — can’t throw a stone in Nashville but you hit one — but it’s still a bit unclear to me what this band is about.
Gloom Girl MFG at The East Room
Gloom Girl MFG opened with their fantastic single “Litterbug,” a song with a post-punk flavor and what I call a “Bauhaus bass line.” It was clear that a large portion of the audience had come for GG, as a small group was dancing in front of the stage at the start of the set and continued to swell. Gloom Girl MFG is one of the tightest local bands I’ve heard in ages; though they came together in late 2020, they’re smooth as though they’ve been in this band for years.
Gloom Girl MFG at The East Room
Their fusion of talents is seamless and infectious. Their web bio says they’ve been compared to Hole, Television and The Pretenders. I hear The Pretenders — Paige MacKinnon’s vocals bring Chrissie Hynde to mind — but I also hear PJ Harvey in the mix, as well as contemporary punk bands like Ganser, Priests, The Paranoyds and The Coathangers. The quartet played several new songs throughout, as well as old fan favorites, and did so with refreshing energy and confidence. All of the members were animated, passionate and precise with their instruments — MacKinnon’s guitar work was just as impressive as her vocals — and Connor McCourt’s drumming was lightning-fast and searing.
Add me to the line of people waiting for the release of anything by Gloom Girl MFG, whether that’s their long-in-the-works EP or a full-length album. I would certainly be happy if Gloom Girl MFG is “the future of Nashville rock ’n’ roll,” but I’ll be very surprised if Nashville can keep them. See them as soon as you can, while they’re still in intimate rooms — it won’t be long before they’re on progressively bigger stages, and you might find yourself jostling amid a big festival crowd to catch a glimpse.
The Spin: Gloom Girl MFG at The East Room, 8/5/2023
With Invitation Global
Gloom Girl MFG at The East Room
