Westmoreland, Generifus, Big Picture
Upstairs at Abyssinia
229 S 45th St.
Philadelphia
March 11, 2026
If you’re even a casual historian of American rock music, a mention of Olympia, Washington conjures a lot: labels like Kill Rock Stars and K Records, the emergence of Bikini Kill and riot grrrl in the early '90s, studios like Dub Narcotic, legendary punk bands like Unwound and Sleater Kinney. (Here's a clip of a pre-Dave Grohl four-piece Nirvana rehearsing at Evergreen, just for kicks.) The list goes on; I’m partial to Team Dresch, Mirah, The Microphones and Heavens to Betsy. My time there on the ground is extremely limited: I remember playing a show at Le Voyeur with an old band of mine in, like, 2014, and it being kind of weird and literally no one coming? So far be it from me to claim any expertise about the state of music and art there these days, though one can’t help but point to the long tail of the post-grunge hangover. I’m curious to know if Olympia, and Evergreen State College, still attracts young artists like it once did, the way that I’ve observed Philly often attracts transplants looking to pursue music and art in a city that’s still affordable and has an undeniably active scene for those things. (Spencer Sult, aka Generifus, said last night of Olympia: “It’s cool for college, and if you’re doing stuff in your twenties, it’s cool, but if you’re not doing stuff, it can get pretty lonely.”)
Last night at Abyssinia featured a former Washingtonian and current Olympian, but musically, there was nothing to suggest the next Nirvana: the music was primarily gentle, consonant and non-confrontational, fittingly for a bill organized by the founder of Seattle’s Quietly Music series, Zach Alva, himself a barely-four-months-in transplant to Philly. His project, Westmoreland, was up first, in a solo iteration: he performed seated, picking and strumming an old semi-hollow-body electric, with a warm, thumb-lead tone, singing songs mostly culled from his recent LP, I Got The Feeling In Bakersfield. With occasional field recordings and SP-404-triggered sampled dialogue as introductions, the tunes unfurled at a relaxed clip, poised and contemplative, Alva’s characters describing relatable anxieties, as in “Little Detroit”: “Look around / Interest rates at a high / Don’t look down / Gather debt ‘til you die.”
Olympia’s Generifus – the merch table had a bumper sticker that said, “Ask me how to pronounce Generifus” (it’s jen-uh-riff-us) – was up next, in the midst of a two-week tour; it’s Sult’s long-running songwriting outlet, and he’s traveling and performing solo. Sult sang and strummed with great percussive feeling, approximating a full band with just his thumb and pointer finger, picking and strumming his Strat with expertise. His vocal delivery sort of reminded me of Nap Eyes’ Nigel Chapman, especially in the more Velvet Underground-evoking, lightly-swung tunes. His compelling set belied his twenty-plus years of writing songs and making records; I’m excited to dive into the eighteen albums he’s made. Between songs he told us: “I took a little cocktail before this: Zyrtec, Ibuprofen, Orbits gum and two boiled eggs from CVS.” “The old Seattle scramble!” someone shouted, and I laughed and gagged a little. Locals Big Picture closed out the night – a duo with nylon string and picked-out mountain dulcimer, the guitarist singing. They held my attention with simple, open chords, droning pedal points, and cyclical, shambolic songs, with peculiar lyrics about the ruinous and wasteful qualities of love. It was a sort of Shaggs-esque take on folk, willfully independent. The night got me thinking: whenever someone’s on stage singing, it’s like they’re tuned into their hometown’s radio station. You can hear what they’re broadcasting, but maybe it makes more sense – maybe the signal’s stronger – if you’re from the same place, tuned to the same frequency.
