Gription - Lost Lake Lounge, Denver, CO - July 9, 2014

[Wisconsin/Boulder] Gumption was what I heard. First impressions, they’re depraved nerds or ex-heroin addicts. They covered Rolling Stones & Sublime to warm up. They have great stage energy – the lead particularly borrows from the stylings of Michael Stipe & Chris Robinson, which supports one description I saw of them as a boogie rock band. They claim punk & metal influences, which oddly weren’t completely far-fetched - particularly 70s punk (like Radio Birdman). Their second song was a good cover of “For What It’s Worth” and they ended with “No Sugar Tonight.” The lead singer’s got a genuinely good voice but sometimes made the mistake of doing silly mimes for every song line – but overall he is a firecracker of a performer. At first I couldn’t place their sound for the life of me which made me like them. They lead my mind to Blues Travelers (in a big way on some songs unfortunately), OAR, glam metal, Robyn Hitchcock, Def Leppard, Hunter S Thompson, southern rock, shoegaze. The crowd really disappeared but it was sort of a weak crowd to start with. I’d x the ‘six cylinder…’ song but keep the ‘take down a notch’ song. Perhaps the very best part of the show was the drunk frat boy at the lip of the stage having the time of his life – he kept shouting ‘Wisconsin!’ (the band’s from there) but I kept hearing ‘West Compton!’ and getting confused – one song had a line on ‘the parties we’ve been to when someone has died’ and he nodded grimly – and then he threw some metal horns but got so transfixed by his flexed bicep he lost track of it. The lead singer became determined to start every song with a profanities-laced indictment of some social issue (e.g., the government hates him, we all need to be free, fuck socialism, typical CO libertarian bullshite). I found him irritating because he pretended to be caustic but ultimately still believed – nihilism’s really the only thing that’s gotten me off for a long time now. I lost my patience when they dedicated a song to Johnny Cash, ‘a fuck you to Nashville,’ and then proceeded to do some Blues Travelers-sounding number – if you’re going to dedicate a song to a legend, at least have some sense of what he sounds like.  (Photo courtesy of: http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_12958534)