Jutes
w/ Mothica, wilt
Eastside Bowl; Nashville, TN
Sept. 19, 2026
Photos by Caleb Chong
Out on his Smile You’re On Tour, in support of dark new album Chin Up, Beautiful, Canadian genre-bending alt metal, hip hop, and alt rock artist Jutes recently returned to Nashville for his biggest, most compelling Music City headliner yet, at Eastside Bowl!
Opening up the show, LA’s wilt are how we first caught wind of this tour, and have had a really impressive, buzzworthy trajectory since breaking onto the scene just a few years ago. The group’s grungy, alt rock sound evokes ’90s nostalgia, and live, they had a ton of stage presence and incredible command of the crowd, especially vocalist Chelsea Rifkin. Playing a mix of tracks from the last couple years of singles and EPs, and some from their forthcoming full-length, when no one’s watching, the band set the bar high for the night, and left us desperately wanting to see them play a full headlining performance soon.
Eastside Bowl was absolutely sweltering, proving even the indoor venues aren’t safe from this prolonged heat wave, and it didn’t help that the show was sold out, but the crowd were eagerly piled in and excited during the brief changeover, as pop punk and alt rock singer Mothica and her band next took the stage. A perfect sort of bridge between the sonic sensibilities of wilt and Jutes, the singer played tracks from her three full-lengths and several EPs, including the recent Somewhere in Between, presenting both a confident, effortless cool and a real heartfelt vulnerability, opening up about a lot of personal things, like her past struggle with suicidal thoughts.
Canadian-born, LA-based Jutes has had a pretty fascinating, genre-bending musical journey over the last decade, cultivating a unique fusion of metal, alternative, R&B, pop punk, and hip hop. His bleak, timely latest LP, Chin Up, Beautiful, is a dark, heavy self-described “futuristic, post-apocalyptic meditation on numbness, survival, and the quiet collapse of feeling in an overwhelming world.” This tour in support feels perfectly matched to that new record’s vibe, and as the singer- rocking a tie and leather jacket- and his great backing band emerged, it was clear that the crowd was hyped from note one. Boasting raw, powerful vocals and a hypnotic stage presence, Jutes played nearly the entire new record (plus a few older favorites), balancing its dark melancholy with his own dynamic, musical intensity.
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