The Nirvana Nevermind baby may be legal drinking age now, and nearly every alternative rock band that flourished and fragmented in the Clinton Years seems to be reforming, but only recently has this Seattle Gen-X’er been succumbing to the Emerald City edition of Generation X nostalgia.
It’s been surprisingly easy for me to resist that impulse, despite being one of many people my age who stood at the epicenter of the Big 1990s Grunge Explosion. Credit a current Seattle scene literally bursting at the seams with great music: There’s not much cause to look back at the Good Old Days when the New Days are generating an amazing soundtrack of their own.
That said, a strong tinge of pride, joy, and–yep–nostalgia crept in on Friday night when Love Battery, Truly, and Rusty Willoughby played Columbia City Theater.
The performer who diverged most from his distant past turned out to be the opener. Then again, Rusty Willoughby’s largely eschewed the sour-candy power pop and British-influenced jangle of his earlier bands (Flop and Pure Joy, respectively) in favor of starker acoustic territory for awhile now. His reliably angelic singing voice combined with his spare acoustic guitar playing and the melancholy hum of Barb Hunter’s cello to create something memorably bittersweet–like Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander channeling Nick Drake.
You really get to see a band’s true colors when technical problems rear their heads, and Truly navigated the PA system’s unexpected hissy-fits like the pros they were, soldiering on gamely when the vocals kicked out and even exhorting the near-capacity crowd not to take out any frustrations on the beleaguered audio crew.
The band played their first live gig in four years with such solidarity and power, you’d think they’d never been apart. Bassist Hiro Yamamoto and drummer Mark Pickerel pile-drove the rhythm in all the right places (you’d expect no less from ex-members of Soundgarden and Screaming Trees, respectively), but their playing mostly drew from a broader palate than the stereotypical pound-and-shred grunge template. Singer/guitarist Robert Roth pulled virtue from necessity, modulating his singing style to a darker, more gothic timbre to accommodate the technical issues and sounding really terrific in the process.
The only liability? The set’s brevity. Truly’s sound runs the gamut from stoner rock to ornate psychedelic pop, and while their 45-minute set last Friday was ineffably awesome, it also ran too short to allow for many of the sonic detours that’ve made their records so rewarding. More please, guys.
Love Battery finished out the night by living up to expectations, in the best possible way. Their Seattle lineage and association with Sub Pop frequently led to invocation of the G word back in the day, but they’re really a psychedelic band through and through. Singer Ron Nine’s unchanged, strangled yelp still sounded like Mark Arm’s kid brother, dosed on acid and wandering Belltown. And best of all, Nine’s and Kevin Whitworth’s guitars spat out reverb-drenched chords and lysergic noodling with reassuring, Rock-of-Gibraltar consistency. It served as a reminder that nostalgia isn’t a bad thing…Especially if it batters your ears hard enough to require plugs.
