We didn't spew, thankfully. But Cold Lunch Recordings' Spewfest IV on Saturday had The Spin feeling a little woozy, like we do just after stepping off a Gravitron ride, for the rest of the weekend. The 40-band, three-stage, all-afternoon-and-night event served as a kind of state-of-the-Nashville-underground with a handful of touring acts in the mix. We weren't able to see every set but we saw quite a lot, crossing Gallatin Pike what felt like a million times between The East Room and The Cobra to catch glimpses of as many local mainstays, up-and-comers and out-of-towners as possible.
Among the promising newcomers was the very first band of the day, the fresh-faced Future Crib. Singer-guitarist Johnny Hopson thanked the 20 or so early birds shuffling in from the sunlit street to the pitch-dark East Room for coming to their “private show,” but the pleasure was all ours. The foursome is young but already tour-tested, and energetic, punchy tunes like “Freakin' Out the Fam” helped us start this marathon at a nice, brisk clip.
At The Cobra’s front room, Iven's understated songs evoked the bummer grunge of Lou Barlow's Sebadoh output, differentiated by bandleader Isaac Horton's unique rising and falling falsetto and the band's penchant for changing up tempos from a krautrock chug to a slowcore crawl and back again. Back at The East Room, Tennessee Muscle Candy's soulful nu-oldies, like “So Good” — “about growing up in a shit-ass town where no one understands you, then moving to a city like Nashville where you're understood,” frontwoman Alexis Saski explained — were all about the posi vibes, and showcasing Saski's impressive pipes.
Dream pop four-piece Bleary, on The Cobra’s big stage, fall on the mellower side of the shoegaze coin (think Yo La Tengo, or San Francisco's lesser-known-but-also-great LSD and the Search for God), with conversational male-female vocal interplay, shimmering guitar leads and melodic high-register basslines to set the heart aflutter. But “Sour,” off their forthcoming Cold Lunch EP — roughly a quarter of Saturday's lineup is also on the label — hinted at a heavier direction, with sharper, less washed-out guitars bringing the band's strengths into clearer focus.
One of the inevitable struggles with a musical buffet like this is the never-ending FOMO. If you're not feeling a band after the first song or two, you're inclined to move on. When Grumpy began their Cobra front-room set, the indie-pop four-piece's kinda-funny, kinda-sad songs were a little too twee for our tastes. But finding The East Room in a between-band changeover, we returned for the group's stirring set-closer “Trying,” which reached emotional highs reminiscent of one our favorite 2018 discoveries, The Beths' Future Me Hates Me — and reminded us that it's not how you start, it's how you finish.
Also at the Cobra front room, buzzed-about new hardcore outfit G.U.N. (“Gangstaz of Underground Nashville,” clarified guitarist Connor Cummins, tongue firmly in cheek) was fast, tight and fully in control, with screaming leads, a steady D-beat pulse and a compelling frontman, Nico Arambatzis (ex-Life Trap). Technical difficulties cut a few minutes off their set, but G.U.N. got people's attention, and certainly stood out stylistically.
Only
Across Gallatin, The East Room had morphed into a sort of synth social with Atlanta's Shouldies: two guys hunched over keyboards, and a singer staring off into space and repeating obscure phrases. Later, one of the synth players switched to open-tuned electric guitar, amounting to a curious New Wave/goth/raga hybrid. Speaking of goth, if you ever wanted a whole band of “Boys Don't Cry”-era Cure — before they got so dark — Only is the local band for you. The group's four members all brought tons of energy and camaraderie to their Cobra front-room performance, but the star of the show is undeniably drummer-vocalist Bryan Moore, who passionately sang his sorrows while keeping perfect time.
Also rising to the occasion were Shell of a Shell, who we've seen play a lot but never to a room as full — or an audience as tuned-in — as they did at The Cobra around dinnertime. The seasick churn of Shell's sinewy prog-punk came across harder than ever while also somehow groovier and prettier, embodied best in a new, not-yet-titled nine-minute suite that bisected the set. Talking to bassist Noel Richards afterward, we learned the band plans to record the song in coming months in Chicago, their ancestral noise-rock/math-rock homeland.
Z
If you saw Z at one of their many shows last year — well, they're not as you remember. When we last saw Z in the summer, they closed their set with a growling, metallic, in-your-face track called “Burner” that hinted at this direction, which we incorrectly dismissed as a lark. Gone with former singer Bri Baxter is the band's snappy art-punk sound. Leader Zach Prosser has moved from bass to lead vocals, while Annalyse Clark (also of doomgazers Tom Violence) handled bass duties on Saturday and helped drummer Julian Ciany anchor the band’s combination of nu-metal, funk, hardcore and punk rhythms. Guitarist Steven Bauer kept the math-rocky sections moving at warp speed, playing well-organized solos that leaned toward prog. Meanwhile, Prosser’s post-Johnny Rotten stage presence was compelling, and we heard hints of Pere Ubu and Southern rock lurking in their impeccably performed set.
Z is currently working on a new full-length, Trauma Center, set for release this spring, and they came across like the ultimate post-punk show band. From their savvy use of feedback, which both framed their songs and provided transitions between their tunes, they summed up decades of rock innovation. None of their stylistic elements seemed incongruous, and some audience members got into old-school slam dancing as Z’s set wound down.
Omni
The turnout for co-headliners Omni was so massive that showgoer overflow had no choice but to spill into the bands-only area at the back of the main room at The Cobra, a venue whose infamously counterintuitive layout only gets harder to navigate as it fills up with people (who are filling up on PBR and other libations). Once inextricably linked to fellow Atlantans Deerhunter — guitarist Frankie Broyles is an ex-member — Omni proved they can pack a house all on their own. With their sackful of taut, smart tunes, which split the difference between Mission of Burma artiness and Talking Heads danceability, the jangle-punk champs turned post-punk into party-rock Saturday, working industriously to satisfy both those looking to cut a rug and those trying to crowd-surf across the room.
Sad Baxter
Braving the near-capacity crowd at The East Room, we managed to slip in to see a couple of songs by Sad Baxter, the Nashville grunge-power-pop band fronted by singer Deezy Violet. We’ve always admired Sad Baxter’s warm and slightly disaffected take on the ’90s music of bands like Ash and The Muffs. Violet has a voice made for fuzzy pop, and we savored Baxter’s melodicism and post-post-Beatles songcraft.
All Them Witches
Things got heavy again during All Them Witches’ set, performed to a packed audience. (Kudos to the staff at The East Room, who expertly managed the near-overflow crowd.) Playing selections from their superb 2018 full-length ATW, the band — led by singer/bassist Charles Michael Parks Jr. — nailed a set of Blue Öyster Cult-meets-Vanilla Fudge blues-rock that was both doomy and uplifting. Guitarist Ben McLeod got down with solos that, in one tune, morphed into a dreamy section reminiscent of prime Pink Floyd, circa Dark Side of the Moon.
Chrome Pony
All Them Witches proved themselves masters of long-form, semi-improvised music that sounded fresh and cliché-free. Back at The Cobra, we caught Chrome Pony, a very accomplished ’70s-style pop band. Led by brothers Tyler and Kyle Davis, they evoked a long-gone era of pop that made room for both AM radio hits and the proto-punk of bands like Hackamore Brick and Flamin’ Groovies. In fact, Tyler Davis has a voice made for AM radio, which we mean as a compliment. Chrome Pony was funny, unpretentious, concise and very melodic. When we departed Spewfest IV later, we had a renewed appreciation for the virtues of both long-form and short-form music.
Kent Osborne
Where attendance at The East Room ebbed and flowed throughout the night — reaching capacity for the Witches — The Cobra was slammed all day, and a lot of the punkish bands playing the venue's smaller stage used their proximity to the audience to elevate their performances. Atlanta-born, Nashville-residing MC Kent Osborne, the only hip-hop act slotted there, did as well. He delivered a frenzied, keyed-up performance (hearkening back to when we saw his band Thank You Please at The Groove on Nashville Cassette Store Day) to an equally turnt crowd, the palpable stress and anxiety in his raps frequently boiling over to full-on rage.
As for the rest, a significant portion of the performers on the Cobra main stage continued to mine the influences of Thee Oh Sees (locals Mouth Reader), The 13th Floor Elevators (Lexington, Ky.'s Johnny Conqueroo), King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (Knoxville's Holifields) and other lysergic-fueled sonic explorers. Most turned in formidable sets — but still, how much psych rock is too much?
Tim Gent
It speaks to Nashville musicians' ambitions professionally and socially to have this many different styles sharing the stage. One imagines a fest of this nature might be less likely to happen in, say, Portland, Ore., or Memphis, cities with strong scenes but less industry infrastructure, and less tendency for scenes to mix. But Spewfest IV didn't feel totally unified, either — especially toward the end of the night, when we compared the crowds at the sardine-packed Cobra, with its conga line of punk and psych bands, versus the sparsely populated East Room. There, a pair of talented, charismatic Nashville rappers, Brian Brown and Tim Gent, turned in excellent sets to rooms where it felt more like a slow Monday than the height of Saturday night. Including an array of rappers on the bill is a welcome and important step, but it’s clear that it’s going to take doing it a lot more often to get local rock fans turned on to what they’re missing.
See our slideshow for more photos.
In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.
