Seattle Subsonic - November, 2009
Beach House – "Norway"
I’m not completely sold on Beach House (fanciful Baltimore lo-pop now on Sub Pop), but this new single “Norway” is totally killing me right now. Killing me into LIFE. Sub Pop has handed this here .mp3 for free (that rhymes).
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Teen Dream is set for release on January 26, 2010.
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New Album Details From Past Lives
Past Lives—that erratic, brooding, temperamental punk band—blogged about their new album, Tapestry of Webs. The name comes from a painting by Ryan Iverson used for the album cover below. Suicide Squeeze Records will be releasing it February 23, 2010.
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You can listen to a new song on the band’s myspace, “Hex Takes Hold”. There are horns and a militant catchiness to it. Pushing boundaries and such. Can’t wait to hear what the group (particularly guitarist Devin Welch) has in store this time around. In fact, here’s some more about the new album as a whole, being recorded at Avast Studios in Greenwood:
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End result: 11 tracks + delightful instrumental soother. Various horn embellishments, deep harmonies, and sparkling clarity = deep journey. Jordan’s very own twin [Gossip drummer Hannah Blilie] stopped by the other day to add female vox to dark dub trip-out. Producer, engineer and mix wizard Steve Fisk provides us daily audio treats as songs arrive in finished state.
My review of their first output, Strange Symmetry, here.
From Cave Singers to Nirvana in 5 steps
Rachel Ratner has connections.
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She’s an on air DJ for KEXP as well as educational outreach coordinator for the station. She is also (and more importantly) the bassist for Partman Parthorse and possibly the only sane person in that group, as well as one half of Seattle’s “Butts” – cheeky eh? In what little spare time that leaves, Rachel somehow decided to explore some of her musical connections and inevitably the binds that tie our Seattle music community together. To do this she created a cartographic study of Seattle’s musical incest. She began trying to map out how the bands she’s in, and her friends bands, were interconnected. Kind of a 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing…only with the Seattle Music Scene and not Kevin Bacon. The resulting criss-crossing family tree should have, by all genetic studies, left us with lots of 3-armed lobster-clawed bands, but has instead rooted Seattle firmly in it’s musical clan.
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To bring her project from the paper to our ears, Rachel created a podcast aligning band after band in a straight line through the canopy. It’s amazing, really.
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Have a listen to Rachel’s kin-folk below or download it by right-clicking the link below.
Rachel’s Podcast
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You can check out more the family tree cartograph on the KEXP site here. And you really can plot the Cave Singers to Nirvana in only 5 steps.
Paramount Pixies
There was one thing, outside of the actual music, that my mind kept returning to during the Pixies concert on Friday night at the Paramount. I couldn’t stop thinking about how each band member might view this new ’20th Anniversary of Doolittle‘ reunion. Are they genuinely excited about it? Or are they in it just for the money? Are they surprised by their current popularity, or did they expect it? Do they think it’s silly, all this fuss over an enigmatic punk band that broke up 16 years ago? Or do they feel validated, or vindicated somehow, by their can-do-no-wrong rep? Much of my questioning was born out of watching each player throughout the performance, taking mental notes from their facial cues, body language, and stage banter (or lack thereof). Essentially, Pixies are a group of four endearing weirdos who sonically coalesced and it’s easy to assume the variation in the answers each would give.
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Kim Deal was beaming the entire evening, leading me to believe her reaction to my queries would mirror an optimist’s. “B-Sides!” she yelped right before they jumped into the first song “Dancing the Manta Ray”. Much to my chagrin, she was the lone person to address the crowd. If you’ve ever seen or heard an interview with Black Francis, you know what we were missing. Admittedly, I probably studied the frontman more than the other three. He is the brain and mouth behind not only Doolittle, but the band itself, and it’s his lyrics and vocal tactics that sink their teeth into me. When he gave little acknowledgment to the crowd—save for a happy little wave 3/4 of the way through—and performed stoically, I wondered if he was really enjoying it. Was he just going through the motions, putting up with it in favor of the fans? Or was he just disinterested in over-indulgence, wanting to keep his cool? He’s always been the gatekeeper, as it were, of the Pixies’ existence—forming them, ending them, reluctantly reuniting them—so his opinion of this resurrection, of this new found popularity, is incredibly intriguing to me. I’ll never know, of course, but conjecture is fun.
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As for Dave Lovering and Joe Santiago, they offered little to make these cognitive assumptions with. Santiago’s guitar chops basically kept Pixies from being a pop band and Lovering spins his own modest magic behind the kit. Each played their heart out, that much is true. In fact, musically, the whole band was fabulously tight. Yes, Black Francis’s howl has lost some of its pierce over the years, but his growl remains true; and Deal’s vocals seemed to lack their familiar lilt, but hating on that would be like hating on your grandma for losing her eyesight. I was astonished by how quick her bass fluttered during “Tame”, moreso than on record. “Here Comes Your Man” sounded downright folksy (was that just me?). The crowd was especially stoked during the existential environmentalism of “Monkey Gone to Heaven”, counting and screaming along with the most incendiary of Francis’ refrains. At one point, I realized that “Hey” had a bit of jazziness to it, and flipped it around in my head. It could’ve been their history clouding my imagination, but the vocal duel on “Silver” conjured thoughts of Francis trying to annoy Deal. She’s singing nice and sweet and normal, and then he comes in all crazy-like like an alley cat, singing out of turn/tune.
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I pondered many things during this concert, as you’ve read, one of which was who was in charge of the visuals. We were treated (I’d never seen it) to a “screening” of Un Chien Andalou, the surrealist film of Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel that “Debaser” is, er, based on. There were four constantly changing colored orbs hovering above the band. The digital screen behind them mutated from abstract song pictorials (the crab, the halo-d monkey, dripping blood, some creepy mannequins), to literal lyric positioning, to Brady Bunch-style head shots, to chummy video of the Fab Four. None of it felt forced or cheesy, not even the cartoon hearts running around during Lovering’s “La La Love You” serenade.
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When “Gouge Away” ended, the band stuck around to soak in the applause, shaking hands with the front row, smiling and waving, and finally taking a collective bow as a similar image moved behind them on screen. The love between Pixies and crowd was thick and palpable. It was an elongated feel-good moment for a band whose continually inflating fame has scored a satisfying victory for music geeks everywhere. The first encore consisted of the slow surf version of “Wave of Mutilation” and “Into the White”. Kim disappeared completely during the latter as the smoke swallowed her. The second encore showcased two Come On Pilgrim songs— “Nimrod’s Son” and “The Holiday Song”—sandwiched between “Bone Machine” and “Where Is My Mind?” from the flawless Surfer Rosa. In the end, who knows the answers to my questions. But whatever the band’s actual intent, they made no mistakes in giving us what we wanted.
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Lots more pics here. You can also purchase a recording of the show (.mp3 or collector CD) from the band’s website.
If You're Curious…
Here are some recent videos of Pixies on their current tour. Thought you might want to either prepare or be jealous. They’re on the docket again tonight at the Paramount. Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
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Dancing the Manta Ray (they’ll be playing some b-sides first)
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Mr. Grieves
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Monkey Gone to Heaven
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Here’s the band’s official youtube channel for more perusing. Sounds like they’ll be playing some pre-Doolittle songs, too.
Mt. Fuji Records Showcase @ the Tractor, Sunset
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Great lineup here showcasing Mt. Fuji’s finest.
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Friday November 20th a the Tractor:
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The Maldives
Spiral Stairs
Point Juncture, WA
Weinland
$10 at TicketWeb / 9 pm
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Saturday November 21st at the Sunset:
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The Whore Moans
Black Whales
Virgin Islands (EP Release for “The Age of Anxiety”)
Mr. Gnome
$8 at Brown Paper Tickets / 9 pm
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Intelligence, Past Lives, Lovvers @ the Comet
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Intelligence:
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Past Lives:
The Raveonettes at Neumos
The Raveonettes were a blitzkrieg of light, smoke, and sound last Friday night. The sleek, beautiful duo tantalized the audience by starting off with a new song, “Gone Forever”, then followed with a handful of older tunes, including “Lust”, “Black Satin” and “Dead Sound” from Lust Lust Lust. I didn’t pay much attention to the crowd, but their electricity after each song matched watt-for-watt with the onslaught of blinking strobe lights. The band, too, seemed to harvest energy from the eye-popping display of wavelength radiation.
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There wasn’t much chit-chat from Sune Rose Wagner or Sharin Foo, content instead to let their guitars do the talking, or screeching, as it were. If they were going to get through a set with 20+ songs, they had better get to work. On “Break Up Girls!”, Wagner and Foo’s abrasive opening stanza was followed with a minimal, dub-worthy heartbeat. The already-sparse song was stripped to the ankles and sounded even starker. The strobes really kicked into gear at this juncture. Foo climbed behind the stand-up drum kit for “The Beat Dies” and “Heart of Stone” (supplanting whoever it was behind there already), and showed off her multi-instrument prowess. I could really only make out her stick-straight blond hair bobbing about in the background.
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The crowd got a little busier when “D.R.U.G.S.” began, a song I thought was dancier in nature than much of their catalog. Heads and hands moved as spotlights scanned the floor. To my extreme satisfaction, they played one of their best songs (was there any doubt?), “Love In a Trashcan”, from 2005′s Pretty In Black. It’s just such a supremely bad-ass song, with it’s simple surf-pop chords tingling and mingling with the faux-triangle keyboard syncopation. The requisite sleazy, trashcan lyrics most definitely apply.
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In the “Seattle moment” of the evening, Wagner heartily dedicated the song “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)” (subtle, huh?) to their friends 7-Year Bitch and Mia Zapata. Zapata, of course, was the vocalist for the Gits and raped and murdered in Seattle in 1993. The pre-encore set concluded with “Suicide”, another girl-centric song of power, and “Aly, Walk With Me”, the darkest and most foreboding song the Raveonettes have written.
King Kahn & BBQ @ Chop Suey
If you’re in town Nov 21st be sure to check out King Kahn and BBQ show at Chop Suey! All the way from Montreal, Quebec — this duo mixes doo-wop and punk in a blend you won’t forget.
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Heinrch the German Hillbilly
Today I uncovered a gem of a band on the Myspace called Heinrich XIII and the Devilgrass Pickers. They hail from Wetter Hessen Germany which I can only assume is the Alabama of Europe. Their “style” is Bluegrass/Metal and they sing in that great capitalist language, English. I wouldn’t say thet talk English all good like we do but it’s a shitload better than my German, and honestly, leads to some pretty priceless lines.
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My favorites being: “GO FUCK YOU, YEAH! Goooo Fuck You!” from the hit track Fuck Y** (that’s really how they censor the title, I mean these Fuckin M***** Fuckers got their Ass H***’s all in a pucker about somethin’! HA.)
And from Something of the Dead – “Something of the Dead, the young that walk they wanna eat the brain inside your head.”
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I just want to see these guys open up for “Fuck You Yankee Blue Jeans” at Spartak Stadium in Moscow. It’d be awesome. And that concludes the dirtiest fuckin post I’ve ever fuckin published. Now dig your teeth into some German Counrty Bluegrass Metal.
Yee hoo!