Safety Net
An abbreviated, irreverent cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up,” played at double the speed of the original, was one of many surprises in Safety Net’s performance, streamed Friday from The 5 Spot via StageIt. The trio gained its sea legs in the months before COVID, supporting similarly minded locals Faux Ferocious, Goner Records no-wave heroines Nots and a reconstituted version of ’70s proto-punks Simply Saucer. But until putting the four-song Health EP on Bandcamp in September, Safety Net remained largely a mystery left to word-of-mouth.
Singer-guitarist-keyboardist Connor Cummins, bassist and co-frontman Sean Flint and drummer Cam Sarrett pulled the curtain back on Friday, delivering on the good buzz with 15 songs including three-fourths of Health, the aforementioned Stones cover and other studies in sturdy, catchy art punk. Anyone who’s seen Cummins play live in Spodee Boy, his long-running, rabble-rousing lo-fi punk project, knows he can entertain. But in Flint, he’s found a hell of a foil. The black-clad bassist’s fierce, emotive bellow contrasted well with Cummins’ tenser, firmer singing style, and his solid, melodic lines worked in lockstep with Sarrett’s motorik drumming. That freed Cummins to run wild along the fretboard — and occasionally a nearby Korg keyboard — firing off pensive upstroked arpeggios, jagged barre chords, gnarly surf riffs and furiously strummed harmonic chords, often within the same passage.
Safety Net’s influences are classic — Public Image Ltd (“Instincts”), The Buzzcocks (“Be With You”), Mission of Burma (“Health”) — but their particular synthesis of them felt novel, exciting and fun. This set was the longest the group had ever played, Cummins noted, and its last several songs were all works in progress — but it didn’t show. He also mentioned that the group has some studio time coming up, so keep an eye out for a new release.
More and more acts are signing up for pro-shot, pro-recorded livestreams from The 5 Spot, suggesting that word’s getting around about what the club and its co-owner Todd Sherwood are offering our starved underground during these lean times: an intimate stage that encourages bands to push outside their musical comfort zones.
Tape Deck Mountain
The shows are also a blank canvas visually, which Tape Deck Mountain, who played Saturday, made the most of. Debuting six new cuts from their forthcoming fourth album True Deceiver, the foursome crowned Best Shoegazers in the Scene’s 2018 Best of Nashville issue dimmed the lights and settled in against a backdrop of soft purple, green and blue projections. The colors suited TDM’s sonic aura. The songs swung steadily, with tones as thick as the smog layer over bandleader Travis Trevisan’s native Southern California. Guitarist Greg Harp, bassist David Sullivan and drummer Andy Gregg round out the lineup.
The ways technology isolates and divides us were an overarching theme of Trevisan & Co.’s most recent album, 2018’s Echo Chamber Blues. Newer material like “Screen Savior,” played during the stream, takes a similar lyrical tack, but with an added layer of cynicism. “Are you staring at your phone / Pretending you’re not alone?” Trevisan asks in “NOMO,” before he deadpans: “Your username is ‘Sad Trombone.’ ”
The dual Jazzmaster-powered grandeur and intensity of TDM’s in-person live show can’t be fully conveyed on-screen, and at 35 minutes, Saturday’s set could’ve been a song or two longer. But with True Deceiver slated for a vinyl release in the spring, as Trevisan announced from the stage, the band's socially observant shoegaze is something you’ll be able to luxuriate in again soon — no smartphone required.
