“This is beautiful. I’m back into rock ‘n’ roll again — feels great,” Ryan Olcott said with a smile at First Avenue on Friday night. As the vocalist and guitarist of 12 Rods, it’s been quite a while since Olcott has been on stage in this capacity. The band’s history is a bit complex, but a quick summary: The Ohio-founded band moved to Minneapolis, dropped their first EP Gay? in 1996, and disbanded after their 2002 release of Lost Time. The group held a reunion show at First Avenue in 2015 and then disappeared again. During quarantine, Olcott discovered demos from 20 years prior and decided to complete them. Friday night was a beautiful return, indeed.

Olcott is the only remaining original 12 Rods member, and he has enlisted a new lineup: Lars Oslund on guitar, Adri Mehra on Bass, Efren Maldonado on keyboards, and Alec Tonjes on drums. Olcott is the clear lead, but with the rest of the band standing parallel with him across the stage, it was easy to take in the group as a whole. Mehra provided necessary backing vocals for songs like “The Time Is Right (To Be Wrong).” Oslund showed deep commitment to the tracks by shaking his head vigorously, executing an intense guitar solo for “The Beating,” and cranking his guitar’s whammy bar to escalate pitches on “Hide Without Delay.” 

Longtime and more recent listeners showed up on Friday. After the encore, a man grabbed the paper setlist on stage. He said he began listening to 12 Rods in the late ’90s when in high school, and this was his first time seeing them live. A group of women in their early 20s stood front and center at the barricade. They’d discovered the band a few years ago via Spotify deep dives and reading niche music review blogs. They traveled from Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota to see the performance. 

The band began with the entirety of July’s release, It We Stayed Alive, in order — beginning with a haunting tone on “All I Can Think About,” slowing down the pace with the psychedelic sonic haze on “Hide Without Delay,” and concluding with an hypnotizing marching beat on “Twice.” 

12 Rods could be called a prog-rock band mixed with a little bedroom pop, hint of shoegaze, sprinkle of psych-rock, and dash of emo, but genre labels are a bit trivial when attempting to conceptualize the band’s essence. All you need to know is that, especially live, listening to the new and older material feels like being coddled in a blissful trance. 

The last half of the set featured at least one track from each of the band’s other four releases. Rock ‘n’ roll hand signs rose overhead upon the first chords of “I Wish You Were a Girl.” Olcott’s vocals on the track from 1998 were raw and creaky — in the best way possible — when he sang, “Cause I feel green, if you know what I mean / Don't be so nice to me, cause I feel awkward.” The audience complimented the demanding drum rhythms on “Make Out Music” with coinciding powerful head nods, and “What Has Happened?” and Summertime Vertigo” came with the loudest sing-alongs. 

The crowd cheered for Olcott’s lyrics with local references, like in “The Beating,” when he sang, “I never thought I'd see the day / There's no Uptown, no downtown / There's not even a Dinkytown / (Kitty Cat I love ya)” — Kitty Cat, as in Dinkytown’s Kitty Cat Klub. In a public statement, Olcott said: “‘Private Spies’ is about those of us who control and document the finest rumors, secrets and gossip in our communities. Written over 20 years ago amidst my power faction research in socialite Minneapolis.” The swaying chorus, “Private spies, inc'd and united / They're everywhere, all you gotta do / Is ring a little bell, whenever you're in trouble / Spies to the rescue for you,” illustrates Olcott’s mysterious aura. 

After going full punk and yelling verses over Maldonado’s sparkling keys on “Terrible Hands,” Olcott left the stage, then promptly returned to play one last track: “Glad That It’s Over.” He sang, “It's been a long day / I just want to go to bed / Let dreams take over my head / I think I'm dying / I think I'm dead,” but his plans are quite the contrary: “We’re going to do more shows. We’re going to be a band again,” he said with optimism in his voice, seeming happy to announce that the long hiatus is over. 

The evening began with Crimes, another Minneapolis-founded band returning from a hiatus, who began playing together again just three months ago. The four-piece’s Duster-esque music contained more ambient vibes than words, but when guitarist Andrew Hansen and bassist Hannah Fraser did harmonize with dreary vocals, a peaceful feeling overshadowed the ominous ambiance. Guitarist Reese Hagy played barefoot, and drummer Luke Friedrich hunched over a low percussion setup, bringing a charming DIY spectacle to the First Avenue stage. Beginning with gentler tunes, the set built to a climax with Hansen huffing and cooing into the mic and the others producing hollowing echoes and harrowing groans on “Poison.”

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Setlist

All I Can Think About

My Year (This Is Going To Be)

Private Spies

Comfortable Situation

The Beating

Hide Without Delay

Twice

I Wish You Were A Girl

Make Out Music

What Has Happened?

Summertime Vertigo

I Think I’m Flying

The Time Is Right (To Be Wrong)

Terrible Hands

Encore

Glad That It’s Over