Mike Watt + The Missingmen (November 3, 2012) The ex-Minutemen and fIREHOSE bassist brought experimental 2011 album Hyphenated-Man—which he described as a 45-minute song with 30 parts”—to life brilliantly before a small crowd, then sat down at his own merch table to interact with fans. –Spencer Patterson
Built to Spill (November 26, 2013) Boise’s indie masters returned to Vegas after a six-year absence with an unpredictable, wide-ranging setlist that included a helluva cover of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” (and a not-so-necessary take on The Clash’s “Train in Vain”). –SP
Bombay Bicycle Club (April 13, 2014) How would the London indie outfit’s 2014 release So Long See You Tomorrow translate live, given its richness and expansive, global textures? Not an issue. The sound inside Vinyl has never been more pristine than during this between-Coachella-weekends performance. –Case Keefer
The Story So Far with Basement and Turnover (November 18, 2015) The pop-punk headliners sold out the show out, but the support acts made the night memorable. Turnover played a set solely consisting of cuts off eventual cult-classic Peripheral Vision, and Basement, having previously only played house shows locally, raged with remarkable energy a year after reuniting. –CK
Primitive Man (August 18, 2018) A pitch-black room accented by dense fog just before midnight proved the perfect setting for the Denver doom masters’ Psycho Las Vegas performance. Primitive Man has played locally at least three other times, but no other environment fit their feedback-bleeding, misery-soaked stomps of metallic glory better. –CK
Uada (August 18, 2018) Psycho’s smaller acts fit perfectly inside Vinyl’s brick-lined walls, perhaps none better than this Portland black metal band, whose hooded appearance and heavy songs felt doubly dark in the tightly packed setting. –SP
DeVotchKa & The Joy Formidable (September 19, 2019) Either one of these sets—The Joy Formidable’s unplugged dream pop, DeVotchKa’s soaring bohemian anthems—could have stood for the whole. Put together, they amounted to a night of entertainment whose scope far exceeded the intimate space.
