Spider Bags

Too often, young musicians whose lifeline to the world is raw rock ’n’ roll think maturity necessitates leaving behind childish things—too often, that’s namely their musical fury and passion. They settle into adulthood and domesticity with an audio simper. That’s thankfully not the case with Spider Bags, two 30-plus N.C. transplants from New Jersey who, over the course of two fiery LPs and a handful of bristling 7-inches, clearly aren’t planning to go anywhere quietly.

A Celebration of Hunger, the 2007 debut collection of hard-drinking anthems and shit-kicking stomps by Dan McGee and Gregg Levy, established Spider Bags as one of those acts whose raw and honest music can find the bloom in shit jobs, bad hangovers and failed romances. The music lurched from ramshackle twang and bleary blues to falling-apart garage rock, like Souled American staggering down the street between the Oblivians and the Stooges. It was a mess of a record, one easy to love for all its faults.

Their next full-length, 2009’s Goodbye Cruel World, Hello Crueler World, didn’t deviate from the thematic template of regret and inevitable shoe-drops—“Any day that starts fucked up is bound to end that way,” McGee warbles on opener, “It Always Loved to Happen.” But the songs are tighter, the palette broader and more assured. There are Greenehorns-like ballads, Exile-flavored country rockers and Crazy Horse epics. Through it all, there’s the sense that better times—or at least different ones—are just a few cold beers away.

If that suggests bar rock to you, it’s true that’s where Spider Bags are in their natural habitat. Expanding to a trio or quartet (Levy has now been replaced by bassist Steve Oliva, with Rock Forbes on drums; Levy has returned on guitar), the band dials the volume and tempo up on stage. They channels their youthful selves into songs that defy time at the same time they bemoan its passing. Resignation rarely sounds this redemptive. —John Schacht