New York Comes to Atlanta

Last night, tiny but charming Atlanta dive the Star Bar hosted the best triple bill I’ve seen since Bright Eyes, Feist and The Magic Numbers played the Georgia Theatre in Athens in 2005.

Hymns, Spottiswoode & His Enemies and The Teenage Prayers—three lesser-known but amazingly talented bands from New York—impressed every step of the way, each offering its unique sound to the small but enthusiastic PBR-swilling crowd (about half of which was comprised of band members).

I walked into the club just after 10 p.m. to the powerful white indie soul of The Teenage Prayers (pictured above). I’d first discovered the band when a friend gave me their spectacular 2005 debut 10 Songs. Aided by singer/guitarist Tim Adams’ rich Lennon-esque vocals, the band came off like a modern update of the early Beatles covering American R&B, albeit with a healthy injection of Muscle Shoals grit and Velvet Underground cool. Anchored by keyboardist Remy Weber’s early-’60s-garage-organ hooks and drummer Kyle Wills’ fevered trap-kit thrashing, the Prayers expertly pulled off this sound at the show, while also drawing heavily from their brand-new album Everyone Thinks You’re The Best, which was released just a day before the band arrived in Atlanta. On these newer songs, three-to-five-part doo-wop-inspired harmonies are suddenly front-and-center, with the Prayers conjuring feelings of a time when rock ’n’ roll was less self-conscious and much more loose, fun and vibrant.

After a brief between-set visit to the Star Bar’s Grace Vault (a bank vault turned epic Elvis shrine, complete with kneelers, candles, velvet likenesses, endless memorabilia and even a centerpiece toilet bowl paying tribute to the king’s final earthly throne), I watched the seven-piece Spottiswoode & His Enemies (pictured below) set up their gear. In 2003, when I first started working at Paste, editor Jason Killingsworth turned me on to Spottiswoode’s Building A Road album. At the time, his music was available on our now-defunct retail site pastemusic.com, and I ended up putting his track “I’m In Love With An Angry Girl” on my personal best-of mix that year. But since then I’d lost track of Spottiswoode. My mistake. The longhaired, mutton-chopped British songwriter—who inhabits a possessed stage presence somewhere between Joe Cocker and Jim Morrison—knocked the crowd over with his gravelly voice, passionate delivery, dry wit and dark sense of humor (check out the accordion-launched “That’s What I Like”). And Spottiswoode’s band—regardless of what he calls them—are certainly no enemies, as they provided a lush, soulful and occasionally creepy bed over which he belted his clever lyrics.

Toward the end of a set that inspired visions of Kevin Ayers and Randy Newman, the Enemies really showed their skills, with trumpet player Kevin Cordt and saxophonist Candace de Bartolo echoing the interplay of Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderly on landmark jazz album Kind of Blue. It was nothing short of transportive, the Star Bar for a moment becoming some back-alley beatnik haunt—suddenly Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty materialize at the bar, chainsmoking and slugging cheap red wine, shifting side to side, their eyes closed as they listen in rapturous bliss to those meandering horn lines as they spiral ever-so-carefully up and up and up into the lost American night under which all the sad-eyed people are lying awake in their beds with the wash of light from the TV painting their tired souls a tear-stained blue and their minds wander to how-do-you-do’s as they pass blank faces on the streets of New York and Denver and San Fransisco and even down in the hot sticky South where all the pretty little colored girls with their soft brown skin dance under the summer stars in New Orleans and Memphis and Atlanta… Atlanta? Wait a minute. I’m in Atlanta. Buzzed on cheap beer at the Star Bar. It’s 2008. And I am not Jack Kerouac.

Spottiswoode wraps up his affecting set, and before I can get my bearings after that strange and spontaneous foray into the Weird, Old, America, I’m assaulted by the gutter-rock ’n’ roll abandon of Hymns (pictured below). I’d seen the band a year or two ago at The Knitting Factory in New York, when they shared the bill with Beck at one of Paste’s issue-launch parties. This time, with a slightly clearer, less Johnny Walker-clouded head, I was able to hone in on what I dug so much about the band. Earlier in the night, both The Teenage Prayers and Spottiswoode excelled at alternating between soulful rockers and hushed, subtly nuanced ballads, and while the Hymns have proved they’re more than capable of subtle, laidback turns (see their new record Travel In Herds), they made it clear that they were in town to kick out the jams and blow off the doors. On “Stop Talking” and many other songs, the band showed a Strokes-like penchant for crafting ultra-catchy, interlocking, melodic guitar and bass lines, but they also—as their gospel-centric name suggests—have a downhome roots-rock stew brewing under the surface, with guitarist Jason Roberts frequently busting raw, stinging Robbie Robertson-style telecaster licks, drummer Tony Kent doing his best Levon Helm, and lead singer Brian Harding locking in with his bandmates on the occasional Appalachian-rooted harmony. They even honored Georgia native Gram Parsons, rocking through a spot-on cover of The Flying Burrito Brothers’ “Older Guys.” After the show, Roberts was almost apologetic that he’d forgotten how to play the guitar solo note-for-note, a sentiment that bordered on comical because it didn’t matter at all—the one he’d improvised was just as good.

As the few people lucky enough to make it to this New York City showcase filtered out around 2:30 a.m., there was a sense of exhausted satisfaction in the air. It had been quite a night at the Star Bar, and the sweat-soaked band members packed up their instruments so they could head out on the road again for their last couple of shows before returning home. I’ll part with a list of remaining tour dates, so you can catch these great bands if they’re heading to your town:

Hymns
• March 20 – Charlotte, N.C. (The Milestone)
• March 21 – Raleigh, N.C. (Slim’s Downtown)

Spottiswoode & His Enemies:
• March 20 - Charlotte, N.C. (Evening Muse)

Teenage Prayers
• March 20 – Charlotte, N.C. (The Milestone, w/Hymns)
• March 21 – Raleigh, N.C. (Slim’s Downtown, w/Hymns)
• March 22 – Baltimore, Md. (The Lo-Fi Social Club)
• March 28 – Cambridge, Mass. (TT the Bear’s)
• March 29 – New London, Ct. (The Oasis)

Hymns photo by Lauren Adams. Spottiswoode photo by Dave Bias.