Concert Review: Smoky Mountain Sirens at Fleetwood’s
There’s something great about a short rock show. One uninterrupted set of fantastic songs. No nonsense, no fluff. Get in, get out, and leave behind an exhilarated crowd.
That’s precisely what the Smoky Mountain Sirens delivered at their Aug. 26 album release show at Fleetwood’s with their own brand of loud, fun, catchy punk rock.
Since its origins in 2019, the trio — Aimee Jacob Oliver (guitar), Rose Vermillion (bass) and Eliza Hill (drums) — has made Fleetwood’s a kind of home base, returning time and again even while popping up at other Asheville venues like Static Age Records, The Sly Grog Lounge, and The Odd. So it tracks that the group would choose the Haywood Road venue to ring in its debut album, Solid 8.
The band has been diligently building hype for the release in recent months, dropping singles and videos online, and dropping in on podcasts and radio shows near and far. The legwork paid off: the sold-out show brought out not only Fleetwood’s regulars and already loyal fans, but also new blood like a Hendersonville couple who told this reviewer that they had heard the Sirens interviewed on Blue Ridge Public Radio while returning from a day of mushroom foraging.
Asheville-based space/psych rock band Guy Roswell opened up the evening with a sonic blanket of bass-driven, reverb-washed ‘60s fuzz, drawing the patio crowd inside to Fleetwood’s garage-like space. Local thrash/hardcore outfit GÄK followed, launching an assault of speed drums, metal progressions, and screaming vocals with frontman Billy Tylenöl invading the audience and dragging a few of them in for vocal support on the crowd-pleasing “No Sleep Till Woodfin.”
By the time the Sirens set up, Fleetwood’s staff had been turning away newcomers for a couple of hours. Inside, a good number of attendees were sporting white beauty pageant sashes emblazoned with “Solid 8” that they’d acquired from the merch table. The band ran through “Hear the Sirens” for sound check, then, for the next 37 minutes, tore through the album’s 10 tracks from front to back.
Solid 8 is full of rowdy but well-put-together songs that trade in equal parts bite and humor, plus some spookiness thrown in and a recurring thread of female empowerment. The title track and songs like “Digital Bride” thumb a nose at far too familiar attitudes of subjugation and objectification but bundle that thumb in high-energy anthemic hooks. The crowd, packed in around the band, pumped fists and nodded heads, picking up the chorus during numbers like “Woman Up” and “K.O.”
Despite their frenetic pace of recording, shooting videos, performing, promoting, and also raising families, working, and conducting life in the real world, the Smoky Mountain Sirens came ready to play. Their performance was seemingly flawless, and they moved from song to song without pausing for banter or band conferences. Oliver and Vermillion are both vocal powerhouses, and when Hill joins in, the group sears.
The songs on Solid 8 are full of momentum. They charge out of the gate and don’t let up. They only hit apex after apex, and the band moved through each one without stumbling, nailing breakneck fast stop-starts on “K.O.” and “Insatiable.” When they wrapped up the album’s performance with “The Worst," the Sirens stopped and looked around for the first time. But the crowd kept at them until they played “War Baby,” another original not on the new album, and the show was over.
“Now,” Vermillion proclaimed, “We get to have a party.” Judging from the energy at Fleetwood’s that Friday night, the party was already well underway.
(Photo by Heather Burditt)
