Dead Confederate performs live / George Atkinson

If you weren’t at Bottletree last night for the Dead Confederate/Wax Fang/Twin Tigers show, you missed one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

Any show that starts off with a girl wearing a Guitar Hero-esque haircut playing bass in a band that’s covering The Cure’s “A Forest” and ends with the headlining band playing in shadows reminiscent of  the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video is a mighty fine night indeed!

More photos and glorious details after the jump.

Twin Tigers/ George Atkinson

The night began with the opening band, Twin Tigers, reminding me so much of the music of my tapedeck teenagehood that I swept in from the sideroom in dismay. The noise factor was definite but, sound issues aside, this band was great!

Derivative of Joy Division, but with uptempo, garage like charm that can only be from Athens, Georgia. Distortion and atmospherics abounded and I whispered to my photographer, “This is my kind of music.”

Wax Fang/ George Atkinson

That’s when Wax Fang took the stage. Whoever booked this show/exact touring line-up was a GENIUS. I’m talking iTunes 8.0 type brilliant matching. I’d heard from a few people about Wax Fang’s often drawing comparison to My Morning Jacket. I was surprised. I found myself thinking that these guys are what I wished Kings of Leon would’ve become on their new album. They were catchy, raw, with a unified soun, not to mention prone to using some great seemingly non-musical instruments to achieve their sound live. I think George and I both fell for this band from Louisville, KY – along with the entire crowd at Bottletree that night.

Dead Confederate/ George Atkinson

As the crowd continued to grow as the night wore on, I stopped and did a little sociological theorizing to pass time between bands. I noticed buttoned-up college guys, moms with their sons who drove in for the show, the usual Bottletree suspects and finally, older professional types who all showed equal anticipation for the night’s headliner: Dead Confederate. The band began to play the first song and it was readily apparent that this was a rare moment in Birmingham music history. The music that I personally like had gained universal appeal across the broad spectrum of our city. Never in a million years did I think that a band fronted by a shaggy, wiry frontman droning along to the grunge of my childhood would be loved by almost every archetype of people we go to school and work with everyday. I loved it.

I can thank Dead Confederate for a heightened sense of hope for the music Bottletree brings to our city.

André reviewed their LP Wrecking Ball a few days back, so if you missed it live you can find out where to pick up their album.