Lombardy: A Musical Boxing Match
When was the last time you went to a rock show and truly felt like you’ve just been hit in the f*cking mouth? If you had to think about it, clearly you didn’t see Lombardy at The East Room last month.
Since 2021, Nashville’s ethical bad boys have been waging a war on bland pop rock and have been steadily making ground through *extremely* high energy shows, on-stage costumes, social media skits, and top quality studio releases.
The aforementioned East Room show, one of their favorite venues in town to play, featured frontman Mike Scott, guitarist Jonathan Plevyak, bassist Seth Rentfrow, and drummer Steve Mascarello wearing suits, ties, and neck braces as they screamed, danced, and flew across the stage, banging into each other in perfectly synchronized chaos.
The music was a killer blend of their beloved riff-rock classics like “Sally” and “Never Gonna Get It” as well as some of their newer songs like “Motorbike”, “I’m A Vibe”, and their latest single “Sexify”, that dropped last Friday in the lead up to their next studio album “Catch A Buzz, Not The Fuzz” releasing later this year.
“Sexify” is the latest example of Lombardy’s impressively evolving sound. Steve and Seth officially joining the band in the past couple years and replacing the founding bass player and drummer has completely elevated Lombardy from both a songwriting perspective and a live performance one, delivering much more powerful and technically skilled shows.
Their sonic shift is extremely evident with “Sexify”, leaning more into the band’s punk and rap rock influences like The Beastie Boys and Rage Against The Machine. It has a catchy guitar riff, slick and fast lyrics in the verses, and punchy choruses repeating the provocative, titular phrase.
The single also showcases the variety within the band that you’ll see and hear at a Lombardy show, with Mike, Jonathan, and Seth all taking different lead vocal parts throughout the track.
For a band whose personality doesn’t appear to take itself seriously, their music is played with the utmost care, proficiency, and nuance. Most of their songs are deceptively complex and not easy to play, let alone doing so in a hospital gown or spacesuit while trading vocals back and forth between three different dudes on stage.
That all being said, you don’t even notice the band’s moving parts as a member of the audience. As a musician myself and one that has heard these songs many times, as soon as their first downbeat smacks me in the face my mind is empty and I am simply along for the ride like I’m on the back of one of their motorbikes hanging on for dear life.
