Seattle Subsonic - February, 2010
Show Review: Swollen Members
It took an extra bit of effort to see Swollen Members perform at Neumos free last week; but it was well worth the wait. Of the opening bands, I thought Tacoma’s, JAY BARZ were a little too self-deprecating and self-promotional, with lines like “F*ck JAY BARZ”, to gain my interest. The group, Potluck, didn’t perform; but Cool Nutz , from Oregon, did a decent job of warming up a full house with more of an old school flow and some danceable stuff. THEN the wait started, at 11PM on a Thursday night, for Swollen Members. No announcements.
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By the time Swollen Members hit the stage at 12:15AM (their scheduled end time) much of the crowd had left and the band offered little explanation other than Canadian border problems. Is this a common delay for bands in Seattle; I’ve heard it several times before, but isn’t that something you would normally account for? I read they performed for the Olympic Village the previous night (being from Vancouver).
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My frustration faded quickly as the band fully invigorated the shrinking crowd. Rarely do you see a whole Neumos crowd jump around for a solid hour. My friends were unfamiliar with the songs, but had no problems getting into it. The sound was perfect (the sound guy had a long time to prepare I suppose). The fun energetic vibe that came from the stage did not seem to represent the gangsta tone of their last album. The MC’s moved around the whole time, into/onto the crowd, and even allowed the audience onstage to breakdance or sing along. The lyrics were crisp and the beats loud, original, and moving; better than the actual albums (which I admired for those same reasons). Prevail laid down one of the best and longest freestyles of the whole night with a lot of respect for Seattle.
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I left very sweaty (who’s sweat?), very tired, and feeling pretty good. Often I’m disappointed by bands which I started listening to ten years ago and finally get a chance to see them perform; this was not one of those times.
$5 Cover – Seattle Premier At SIFF
Speaking of music and movies (they go well together, no?), this Monday March 1st at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) Cinema—located inside McCaw Hall—you can catch the screening of the much-ballyhooed Seattle version of MTV’s $5 Cover. It’s an hour long and tickets are (ironically) $10. First come, first served; no advance tickets available. Starts at 7pm.
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If you missed this little endeavor, basically it’s a stylish profile of 13 Seattle bands as they wade their way to varying degrees of success. Director Lynn Shelton, who made the Sundance hit “Humpday”, is a local gal herself. Bands who have a shot at larger fame include Thee Emergency, TheeSatisfaction, the Moondoggies, Champagne Champagne, the Lights, the Maldives, the Spits and more.
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The trailer gives the movie a sort of docu-drama feel, hinting at a sort of semi-reality (it is MTV, after all), which I’ll admit is kind of a turn off. I don’t watch MTV and I prefer regular ol’ documentaries. But the bands Shelton and Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Flow”) chose to work with are all solid and representative of just how varied our enclave is. Seattle (and the NW) is pumping out some cah-razy shit these days. Trailer below:
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HER Magma Festival
| Friday, March 5, 2010 | ||
| 7:30 pm | ||
| Saturday, March 6, 2010 | ||
| 5:00 pm | ||
| Friday, March 12, 2010 | ||
| 7:30 pm | ||
| Saturday, March 13, 2010 | ||
| 7:30 pm | ||
| Sunday, March 14, 2010 | ||
| 7:00 pm | ||
| Friday, March 19, 2010 | ||
| 7:00 pm | ||
| Saturday, March 20, 2010 | ||
| 7:00 pm | ||
| 10:00 pm | ||
| Friday, March 26, 2010 | ||
| 8:00 pm | ||
| Saturday, March 27, 2010 | ||
| 5:00 pm |
Hollow Earth Radio (HER) is curating its popular 3rd Annual Magma Festival next month, and will feature the online radio station’s signature hyper-eclecticism of local earthed (Dylan Carlson of Earth!) and unearthed (Emeralds!) acts. The “festival” is spread out over the four weekends of March (easy to keep track of, no?) and across several different locations touting varying degrees of renown. The Vera Project, The Fremont Abbey, the Healthy Times Fun Club, and the Henry Art Gallery are among the more prominent venues, while the Mine, 20/20 Cycle, The In, Kenyon Hall, and Shafer Baillie Mansion are among the less reputed.
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So, local music-loving geeks, whatever your schedule or taste, you’re likely to find something here to suit your fancy. Might I suggest (obviously) the inaugural lineup at the Vera Project on March 5th? Folk-rockin’ frontwoman Thao Nguyen plays with local one-man sonic tribalist Alaskas, Deception Pass, and Grr. Or might I suggest the Eruption Show at the Mine on March 27th with an absolute crap load of bands that I know little about but might favor for a joyous time? Good, thank you.
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The poster’s type is kinda small, so click it for largeness or visit the site for more links and details. Show prices range from $6-$15, but you can buy a $50 pass that gets you into all the shows. Proceeds will benefit the radio station in specific and the DIY community in general.
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SUPPORT IT OR THEY WILL ABORT IT! (I just made that up.)
Kinski @ Comet
| Saturday, February 27, 2010 | ||
| 9:00 pm |
Damn, I’m going to be out of town the weekend Kinski decide to re-appear in Seattle.. and AT the COMET!
They are playing in support of buddies and new Sup-Pop signees AFCGT. For anyone able to make this they’ll be debuting at least two new songs too! The next record is in the works and they hope to record in a few months.
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AFCGT (CD RELEASE),
ARBITRON
$7 21+
Vince Mira’s Third Annual Johnny Cash Spectacular @ Neumos
| Friday, February 26, 2010 | ||
| 8:00 pm |
Vince Mira and friends from Seattle’s favorite bands sing the great songs of the Man In Black
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The Man In Black left big shoes to fill, but a shy Seattle teen has been stepping in for several years now, and dropping jaws in the process.
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Vince Mira’s slender frame and tender years don’t prepare you for his booming voice. Johnny Cash would’ve turned 78 on February 26. Mira’s not even old enough to vote, but the baritone echoes of Cash that emanate from his lips have earned the respect of Cash’s son, John Carter Cash (who produced his debut album) and media outlets across the nation.
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Mira and an assortment of vocalists including the Dusty 45s Billy Joe Huels, Kirk Huffman of Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, Marshall Scott Warner, Nick Streeter and Kerry Zettel of See Me River (and more) will take the stage at Neumos to honor one of this country’s most enduring musical icons.
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Doors at 7pm :: $15 adv
Under Great White Northern Lights
The much-anticipated White Stripes documentary screens at the Northwest Film Forum this weekend, for two nights only. Friday (2/26) and Saturday (2/27) at 9pm. Looks pretty righteous, but I hope they address that darned brother/sister/girlfriend/boyfriend thing (jk!).
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I saw another documentary with Jack White not too long ago. Huh, fancy that.
Past Lives In-Store At The New Sonic Boom
I went down to the new Sonic Boom on Melrose Avenue for the first time Tuesday night to a) check out the new Sonic Boom, b) pick up a copy of Tapestry of Webs and c) watch a live performance from Past Lives. Success on all three fronts. (I even picked up a few other albums. Yay.)
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First, the store: it’s pretty nice and spacious. But it’s a record store, so nothing special; just rows upon rows of CD and vinyl racks (the vinyl area, btw, is much larger than what they had at the old 15th Avenue location). The performance area is rudimentary, but no less effective. And it’s high up so the band’s feet are basically at eye level—good for swarms of people. The lighting is a bit poor, with a large hanging fixture right where most frontmen/women would have their face. Owner Jason Hughes astutely turned it off mid-way through the set. Now they just need some mood lighting of some sort. Neon signs? Strings of lights? The possibilities are endless.
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Second, the band: I don’t have to tell you these guys were spot on (they were). It’s how they roll and their maturation as a cohesive unit has been pleasing to watch over the last few years. Past Lives, who tread adroitly in uncommon groovy art-punk, are easily one of the most exciting local bands around (FWIW, Pitchfork recently gave Tapestry an admirable 7.5 rating). Watching them play, I was struck by this realization: they remind me of TV on the Radio. More stylistically than sonically, but the similarities are there. Both bands have an experimental nature to their music; both bands have a unique lead vocalist who often keeps one arm contorted somehow while performing; both bands have a thick-bearded guitarist contributing high-register backup vocals; and both bands have a dexterous drummer with a hip-hop style. What’s this mean? Not much, I just thought it interesting.
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They played “the hits”, if you will, from the new album: “Past Lives”, “Hospital White”, “Vanishing Twin”, “Paralyzer”, and “Hex Takes Hold”. Below is a video for “Vanishing Twin”:
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Don’t forget, you can stream the whole album on pastliveslife.com.
Virgin Islands, Unnatural Helpers, Little Cuts and Male Bonding @ Sunset
| Friday, March 5, 2010 | ||
| 8:00 pm |
Holy Mother, my head’s about to implode with excitement.
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Last weekend was an overload of great Seattle rock-n-rollah. For you sorry sum-bitches that missed Virgin Islands at the Comet or Unnatural Helpers at the Funhouse, it’s OK. The Sunset Tavern has the cure for your pain (And trust me, I KNOW your pain). Friday, March 5th you can get everything last weekend offered, and THEN some.
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It’s hard to even fathom that this is all happening in one night on one stage in one little bar in Ballard. The line-up here looks like the bill for a mini-festival.
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If you’re looking for me between sets, I’ll be over at the Smoke Shop catching my breath.
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Friday, March 5th @ the Sunset Tavern
Male Bonding
Unnatural Helpers
Virgin Islands
Little Cuts
8:00, $8, 21+
damn.
Virgin Islands, Unnatural Helpers, Little Cuts, Male Bonding..
Holy Mother, my head’s about to implode with excitement.
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Last weekend was an overload of great Seattle rock-n-rollah. For you sorry sum-bitches that missed Virgin Islands at the Comet or Unnatural Helpers at the Funhouse, it’s OK. The Sunset Tavern has the cure for your pain (And trust me, I KNOW your pain). Friday, March 5th you can get everything last weekend offered, and THEN some.
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It’s hard to even fathom that this is all happening in one night on one stage in one little bar in Ballard. The line-up here looks like the bill for a mini-festival. First up, to light the fuse, are the Little Cuts. A trifecta of rock consisting of former COPS bassist Drew (Droo) Church along with Dave Hernandez (of Shins fame) and drummer/incredible tattoo guru, Curtis James (Old Haunts) taking up the skins. They had to bag on the Comet show with Virgin Islands last weekend so here’s their chance for that pent-up power to flow.
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Next, Virgin Islands take to their “home” stage. It’s been said over and over that Virgin Islands are the evolution of ex-punkers, The Cops. Personally I like to think of them more as an evolution of Seattle rock. The band has incredible solidarity, the rhythm drives the songs forward at breakneck speed, the guitar is screams alongside the vocals without trampling them and the whole thing comes together with the oneness of a fucking wrecking ball.
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What Virgin Islands have released so far on EP can be heard here. We can look forward to hearing some cuts from the band’s upcoming 7″ tentatively titled Cobra Wine as this is their current inspirational elixir of choice. And just as a note here; these guys are more than worthy of headline status.. and they’re playing second of 4. Tells you a little about how the night’s going to pan out.
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Third up, Unnatural Helpers, who stomped the Funhouse stage flat on Friday (see LB’s post here), are going to be delivering more of their “drop-kick garage punk”. The ‘Helpers are an ever-evolving phenomenon centered around drummer/singer Dean Whitmore and featuring a revolving laundry-list of Seattle music cornerstones from guitarist Chris Martin of Kinski to bassist Kimberly Morrison of Dutchess and the Duke. It would be a complete guess to tell you who was slated to be playing on Mar 6th but be assured the performance will be super-charged
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Finally the night is capped with one of the newest in the Sup-Pop quivver, London’s “good-time” 3-piece Male Bonding. They’re a lo-fi combination of 90′s grunge and 70′s psychedelia. With a pretty large library to draw from, I’m hopinmg they’ll bring their best. This night also marks the first in a huge string of North American shows for Male Bonding so expect them to be brimming tons of energy.
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If you’re looking for me between sets, I’ll be over at the Smoke Shop catching my breath.
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Friday, March 5th @ the Sunset Tavern
Male Bonding
Unnatural Helpers
Virgin Islands
Little Cuts
8:00, $8, 21+
damn.
Blood Hag Live, Poetry Reading, Masturbating on the Couch
I was driving to the Hugo House to see BloodHag. They were playing in the Hugo House Literary Series which is a series of events with three or four writers and a musical act of some sort. The events are themed so the writers and the musicians have to write material related to the theme. It’s a cool thing. I went to the November show at the Hugo House and the writers were animated, funny, and meaningful. The musical act that night was a woman alone with her voice and an acoustic guitar. Her tunes were beautiful, heartfelt, soft, and warm. It was a good night. And I was expecting the same from Friday’s lineup of writers and BloodHag.
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Being that the shows commission new material I made a point of not listening to the band’s music on their MySpace site. I wanted the live impression to be my first impression. Thus I pulled into a parking space across the street only knowing that BloodHag billed themselves as literary-themed death metal and that they have toured libraries. Death metal isn’t my normal thing, but libraries and books are so I was curious to see how thing played out. I was curious to see a death metal band follow the quiet page turning of the short story writers and the poets. Plus, my own band was playing next month’s Hugo show so I wanted to meet the sound guy and talk to him about recording. I wanted to check the sound with a band and not just an acoustic guitar. I wanted meet the woman who runs the event and talk about how many songs we would do and how they’d be split between the writers. Much to do in other words.
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I sat in the car as it was only 5:30, and doors opened at 6:30. Besides these special events, Hugo House has open mic readings of poetry and such of course so sitting in my car and looking at the house there just across the street I remembered the one time I went to an open mic poetry night and read a few of my own. It was years ago in Columbus, Ohio. I went with a woman I was seeing, a married woman. Yeah, I know, bad situation but these things can’t be planned. People meet when they meet. That can’t be decided, only what to do or not do with the time together. Sometimes the timing is right, sometimes it isn’t. For us of course, it was and it wasn’t. The important thing was that we got along very well. We went out for drinks together almost every day. We did things illicit lovers do. We often talked about Mrs Dalloway, and one time we went to an open mic poetry reading at a place called Larry’s near Ohio State University. It was rumored to be a gay bar, but I also heard that was a rumor perpetuated by the grad students to keep the undergrads out. Either way I didn’t care. It was a place to drink and read the word. I showed up there one night with that woman, Linda, and three of my poems and signed up to read.
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Thee Oh Sees, the Urinals, and Unnatural Helpers Totally Fuckin’ Killed It
Dudes, I’ve been totally dying to get some of these pics up from the Funhouse last Friday night (2/19). It was easily one of the best shows I’ve been to the last few months (check the Show Critic tag, there are some doozies), as it was a garage rawk fest for the ages. Or at least the age that contains the last few months. Unnatural Helpers opened up for the Urinals who opened up for Thee Oh Sees, and all three totally fuckin’ killed it.
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I showed up just in time to catch Unnatural Helpers, as their dark and dirty Stooge-grooves turned out to be the perfect catalyst for a raucous sold out show (if you don’t frequent the Funhouse, then you’re missing out; no kiddin’). As you’ve likely heard, the band has an LP coming out on Hardly Art pretty soon, and all I can say is that I hope they were able to capture on record the gritty punk spectrum that the they so easily tread on stage. They’re not breaking ground, obviously, but they’re doing their damnedest to stomp all over it just for the hell of it. Led by Dean Whitmore on drums/vocals, this is a motley crew of shredders playing feel-good, drop-kick garage-punk. Sounded like they might lose another player (guitarist Brian Standeford; Kimberly Morrison has already been replaced on bass), but if Charles Leo Gebhardt sticks around, they should be alright.
That’s Thee Oh Sees founder John Dwyer up there, and it was a hoot watching him play guitar. My knees were against the stage for this set, so it was the perfect setting to finally see these popular San Franciscan swamp-punkers. Dwyer is a caricature on stage: tattoos and tank top, shoving his beat up Burns Double Six high into his armpit and shifting freakishly on his toes as if he were Wile E. Coyote on one of those ACME high wires. He plays like a maniac and his music shows it. I love the vocal interplay between he and Brigid Dawson, drenched in echo and retro sass. The rest of the band, it’s apparent, has to work at keeping up with the main man. Drummer Mike Shoun was front and center and played as if his life depended on it (it probably doesn’t). Petey Dammit plucked his Fender in the background like an old-timer, content to lay rhythm. They were all great, though, and you can see a couple (high quality) videos I shot here and here.
Thee Oh Sees
Thee Oh Sees
Thee Oh Sees
Unnatural Helpers
The Urinals
Ravenna Woods
If you were in a cult and you wanted a soundtrack for your seaside bonfire and kool-aid party, I would recommend you hire Ravenna Woods. Only don’t pay them in punch, we are going to want them around for a while.
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The most notable element of this band’s recent release “Lakes and Demons” is rhythm. Everything revolves around the rhythm. I immediately recall the Dodos’s use of all things percussive. Singer/guitarist Chris Cunningham’s guitar work is also noteworthy; his playing is equal parts rhythm and melody, if not more of the former. The guitartistry invokes the thought of a Jose Gonzalez LP spinning at 45 rpm. This record is ambitious, full of thought and craftsmanship that deliberately toes the line of lo-fi/overproduction. The backup vocals ubiquitously flow in and out of audibility, and for me, it’s working. This record has energy. The more I listen, the more impressed I become that this is only three people. It’s like the organic brand of Menomena. It’s an album that can be enjoyed in full, although “People in High Places” and “Ghosts” are garnering the most plays. They make the most of their sonic canvas (via healthy doses of xylophone) and I really hope they can translate this live…
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I arrived at Chop Suey to find that these twat-bots left me off the list… no matter, I’m absolutely willing to support this band and I’m curious to see the trio in a live setting. Am I a sucker for a crazy looking dude jumping around, pounding on some floor toms? The answer is yes, I am, and they have one of those. I’m also a sucker for a guitarist that plays without a pick. They have one of those too. Most of the vocals are done in two-part harmony and are drenched in delay. The third song they played, “Devil’s Coming,” made it apparent that these two gentlemen have been singing together for sometime. There is a lot of “whoa”ing. So if you’re someone who likes lot of “whoa”s, to you I give the green light. As for me, the ambition heard on the record was being delivered. I liked it, a lot. After the show, my verdict was this: the folly of creating a record you can’t replicate live does not claim this band.
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The first night I spent in Seattle I went to see a friend-of-a-friend’s band… some local upstart that was part of a bill that was drawing about 30-40 folks on a Friday at Chop Suey. At one point during the show the guitar amp quit and the singer did an acoustic song while the problem was being resolved. It was a song called “Icicle Tusk.” Since I was new to the city, and so as not to appear naïve, I wanted to disguise how impressed I was with this guy. “Is everyone this good?” I wondered. I probably offered my buddy some insightful bit of critical analysis such as “fuckin good, man,” but secretly I was thinking to myself, “These guys are not going to be playing to this small an audience for very long.” And they didn’t. I got a similar feeling at the Ravenna Woods show. File under “Band to Watch” and hope they stay together.
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For fans of: The Dodos, Bon Iver, Yeasayer, Sea Wolf
