The Blue Room at Thirdman Records isn’t just a stage, it’s a pressure‑cooker. Lights hum overhead, the crowd’s pre‑show hush hangs dense, and every time a band cracks that silence, something permanent gets etched into the night. I’ve watched this space shape‑shift before with Manchester Orchestra laying their songs bare while debuting an associated music video, and Lillie Mae flooding the walls with Appalachian soul. Tonight’s spark came early: Athens‑based singer‑songwriter Wim Tapley opened with a lean, magnetic set, weaving cuts from his 2024 LP Red Door into hushed story‑songs that stretched back to his D.C. troubadour days. Tapley’s mix of gentle finger‑picking and sudden, soaring choruses coaxed the room closer to the lip of the stage, the perfect slow burn before the main fuse was lit.
Jeff Gorman and Jake Cochran of Illiterate Light have always thrived on tension: folk instincts colliding with fuzz, head‑down groove against sky‑high vocals. Back at Bonnaroo ’19, their pedal‑powered rig felt like a desert hallucination; now it’s simply part of the machine. The self‑titled debut (2019) offered earnest, wide‑eyed rock “Better Than I Used To” felt like a handshake. Sunburn (2022) tightened the screws: darker synth hues, lyrics circling climate dread and spiritual static, urgency replacing innocence. But 2024’s Arches album is the real pivot: a neon‑lit leap that folds neo‑psychedelia and synth‑haze into the duo’s rangy indie‑rock core, and it supplied the muscle for tonight’s set.
That evolution was on full display from the opener, “Norfolk Southern,” a locomotive groove that barreled straight into “Don’t Settle Down.” By “Feb 1st” and the swaggering “Light Me Up,” the temperature in the room had risen a few degrees. The set list played out like a roadmap of where the duo’s been and where they’re heading:
- Norfolk Southern
- Don’t Settle Down
- Feb 1st
- Light Me Up
- Pay Phone
- Montauk
- Black Holes
- I Wanna Leave America
- Nuthin’s Fair
- Blood Lines
- In the Ground
- Always Always
- All the Stars are Burning Out
- Vampire Blues
- Better Than I Used To
Mid‑show, “Montauk” shimmered like sea‑spray in moonlight, while “Black Holes” dived headlong into a fuzz‑thick trance. “I Wanna Leave America” felt downright prophetic, its restless lyric delivered with a grin that suggested they might bolt straight from the stage to the interstate.
But the emotional apex came with “Blood Lines.” Gorman took a beat, eyes scanning the balcony for his brother. “Means a lot that he’s here tonight,” he confessed. The crowd tightened its circle, and the song already a slow‑burn hit harder, glowing with sibling gravity.
Cochran’s upright‑kit choreography stayed magnetic all night; Gorman’s split‑duty bass‑and‑guitar wizardry kept the bottom end throbbing while melodic lines arced overhead. They closed with “Better Than I Used To,” a full‑throttle reminder of how far they’ve travelled since those Tennessee‑heat festival days.
Growth, it turns out, isn’t about ditching your roots, it’s about driving the stake deeper. Illiterate Light dug in tonight, and The Blue Room shook back in approval.
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