Best in fest: Highlights from a strong debut for Best Friends Forever
There was no rust, just sweat.
And perhaps a lacerated vocal chord or two.
On Sunday, Seattle screamo quintet The Blood Brothers shrieked back to life — quite literally — after a decade of dormancy, headlining the final night of the inaugural emo and indie rock festival Best Friends Forever at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center.
“Set fire to the stage on fire!” vocalists Jordan Blilie and Johnny Whitney caterwauled in unison during a show-opening “Set Fire to the Face on Fire,” living up to their shared command with an incendiary performance.
Assaultive and sensitive, eruptive and emotive in equal measure, their songs grab you by the heart and throat at once.
Musically, their tunes are choppy, like the high seas during a tsunami, and seemingly come at you from five directions at once, an often manic blur that spans punk, New Wave, art pop and whatever else pops into their heads at any given second.
Though they hadn’t shared a stage since the Obama administration, you wouldn’t have known it by watching them on Sunday, their set breathless and exhilarating to behold.
“This is our first show in 10 (expletive) years,” Whitney exclaimed at one point, sounding as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying.
And what a show it was.
The Blood Brothers’ performance was a highlight of Best Friends Forever’s first year.
Here are a few more takeaways from a strong, memorable debut for the fest:
Praise Jesus
He looked at the crowd the way a wolf eyes a rabbit.
Then he lunged forth like said beast in pursuit of his prey.
Per usual, Jesus Lizard singer David Yow spent almost as much time on the audience’s outstretched arms as he did on stage on Sunday.
Even stone-cold sober, Yow comes across like the drunk guy at the end of the bar yelling at you — the difference being you actually want to hear what he to say.
With the Jesus Lizard back in town for the first time in nearly three decades in support of their first new album, the excellent “Rack,” in as many years, Yow led a seismic performance that had the barrier between the crowd and stage shaking.
The band has made a career out of perfecting the balance between nuance and bombast, with needling guitars, slippery rhythms and bravura drumming, while Yow does his best to spit his tonsils out of his throat and into your face.
“Give me another boilermaker!” he roared on one of the band’s signature tunes, named after said beverage.
Make it a double.
Pass the Chloraseptic, please
It was as if half the audience had bullhorns for larynxes.
“You guys sing so good” — and loud — Sunny Day Real Estate rhythm guitarist Greg Suran said during the emo favorites’ headlining set on Saturday, complementing the crowd on their vocal contributions to the band’s catalog.
Playing their highly influential debut “Diary” in full, the group conjured the most impassioned singalongs of the weekend, their songs of heartache and longing turned into full-throated anthems.
When they aired “In Circles,” the crowd nearly drowned out the band.
But plenty of throats were as raw as these dudes’ hearts come Sunday morning.
Best air guitar sesh
His guitar gently wept, then came at you like a rottweiler that’s just chewed itself off its leash.
Built to Spill frontman Doug Martsch is pretty much the Jimi Hendrix of dudes from Idaho who look like your mailman.
On Saturday, the band performed their second record, the endearingly starry-eyed, lo-fi indie rock classic “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love” front-to-back, and Martsch was in full-on guitar hero mode, per usual.
Your wrists are still sore if you tried to test your air guitar chips to his unabridged solo on “Some.”
Built to Spill’s set kicked off three straight main stage performances from Pacific Northwest bands playing seminal albums in full to celebrate their 30th anniversary.
Speaking of which…
C’mon, feel the noise
The song was “Envelope,” and they were pushing it.
Olympia, Washington post-hardcore troupe Unwound didn’t just bring the noise on the tune in question, they shaped it into something grand, gorgeous and pointedly grating all at once.
Performing their second album “New Plastic Ideas” in its entirety on Saturday, the band often went from placid to punishing in an instant, the band navigating labyrinths of dissonance and knotty rhythms while dropping a few breadcrumbs of melody to help you find your way.
Honestly, though, the whole point of these songs was to get lost in them.
A good pummeling
It was like playing chicken with a bulldozer.
And losing.
When raw-lunged Salt Lake City noise rockers Form of Rocket hit the Third Street Stage on Saturday, it kind of felt like you were getting hit as well.
That’s how physical the band’s sound was, with bass-as-battering ram, jagged peals of guitar and lyrics bleak enough to make Werner Herzog blush.
Stop sniveling, bruises heal.
An even better comeback
“Does the singer wanna wreck the song?” Murder City Devils frontman Spencer Moody asked on “Cruelty Abounds.”
Fair question, considering the source.
Now, Moody is one of the greatest underrated rock singers from one of the greatest underrated rock bands.
But he can also live up to his surname sometimes.
The last time the Devils played Vegas, at Punk Rock Bowling 2021, Moody did a massive disservice to himself and his band by showing up wasted, barely able to sing.
But at Psycho Las Vegas 2017, he was on point and the Devils brought the heat.
Really, you never know what you’re going to get — which, admittedly, is part of the fun with this bunch. They don’t play it safe.
Thankfully, Moody was in strong form on Sunday as the band ripped through a 17-song set as tight as a clenched fist, keys purring, guitars growling, Moody howling.
From ruminative opener “Midnight Service at the Mutter Museum” to snarling closer “I Don’t Wanna Work for Scum Anymore,” the Devils, well, murdered.
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram.
