image courtesy of eastofla.com
The Sleigh Bells show at The End Sunday night (with openers Nerve City and PoPo) was a sweaty, rainy, and smelly affair. However, the highlights of the evening more than made up for the fact that I peed on what might have been someone’s kidney in the broken toilet by candlelight (the lights in the bathroom, also broken) and at one point I got so claustrophobic I almost stood on the side of the stage (No, that was not a good idea, Ryan Bruce, and yes, that stage manager does seem mad).
Richmond, VA’s Nerve City were the first duo of the evening. Technically, “they” started as the home recordings of ex-Poison The Well guitarist Jason Boyer, but last night a drummer that looked like Hollywood producer Brian Grazer joined him on stage. Jason’s raspy howl and Wolfman Jack laughter were the perfect aural pairing to the olfactory assault I encountered that night. The End smelled of wet dog, dirty ponytail and, mysteriously, McDonald’s hamburger. So, conjuring up the sounds of dirty,garage-rock heroes from yesteryear, like The Troggs, was appropriate.
Next up was PoPo, a pair of brothers recently signed to Diplo’s Mad Decent label who immediately seemed to cool everything down with their irreverent stage banter, yin-yang-peace-sign-printed merch and references to Nashville’s racial profiling (they’re of Pakistani origin and spent the day at a rifle range — hilarity ensued?). PoPo will undoubtedly generate buzz in March when they head to SXSW if they haven’t blown up by then. The brothers’ charisma and the fact that lead singer Zeb Malik sounds like if Squeeze’s Glen Tillbrook grew up watching Bollywood films with his mother will certainly do them many favors.
Sleigh Bells took over promptly around 11pm, bounding onto the stage in a hail of seizure-inducing strobe lights and throbbing beats. What followed was hit-after-hit from their debut album Treats. The sold-out venue was filled with folks clearly familiar with every lyric. Singer Alexis Krauss lead the hypnotized, musty crowd in sing-a-longs to tracks “Crown on the Ground” and “A/B Machines”, but it was the kinetic energy of “Kids” (my personal, new pump-up jam) that had every mouth mouthing and transformed stoics on the verge of heat stroke into rowdy noise-pop disciples. In fact, right before the encore they were joined on stage by the Lipscomb equivalent of Jodie Foster’s “Nell”, who gyrated frantically and tried to take over the mic before leaping off the stage. Basically, their entire set was the closest I’ll ever get to attending a church revival held at M.I.A.’s twitter background during the apocalypse.
Tags: music, nashville, nerve city, popo, sleigh bells, the end, toilet fuckery
