SunBreak Roundtable: 2010 Musical Memories

As 2010 recedes into the fog of memory, some of your friends at The SunBreak gathered 'round the virtual table to remember the past year's musical experiences.  Watch it above, or read the transcript below.

Josh: So, standouts from 2010?

MvB: I should be upset with Sufjan Stevens for giving a live performance at the Paramount that so energetically trumped his album.

Josh: YES, YES, YES to that Sufjan show. I can't remember any other performance that so changed my mind about an album. My resistance to the bloopy, squelchy, synthetic assault on his usual whispery beauty on the Age of Adz was high, and I didn't know what to make of it. But somehow, seeing him perform it at the the Paramount with a halloween-decked band, behind a light-painted scrim, and with the full-on shuttershades freak-out of "Impossible Soul" left me finding excuses, train rides, or long walks to spend with the record in my earphones. That he closed the set with "the hits" helped me to leave the show with a sigh of delight.

MvB: Maybe it's just the Paramount: Rufus Wainwright's show there was also a stand-out, with the normally insouciant Wainwright struggling through tears, and making the latter half of the evening into a heart-wrenching valediction for his mother.

Audrey: Cosign on the magical music powers of Sufjan and Rufus. I cried at both shows.

Josh: For a stereotypically rain-soaked wonderland, we certainly didn't hurt for chances to see music outside.

Tony: Last summer's Doe Bay Fest proved a perfect tonic for the accompanying warm climes. Fest programmers offered another strong lineup, with an emphasis on the rootsy and the gorgeously pastoral. Highlights included a lush set by Seattle's premier chamber-pop ensemble Grand Hallway, rip-roaring alt-country from the Maldives, and the most welcome discovery (from this cramped perspective, at least), the sublime pop sounds of upstarts Curtains for You.  

Josh: For moments of pure musical joy, it's hard for me to think of anything better than LCD Soundsystem's mainstage performance at Sasquatch. Nevermind your hillside couple so bored with the Decemberists that they resorted to public intercourse, I'll see your 2009 Dancing Man and raise it a hillside of spontaneous conga lines and synchronized dance moves that swept through the crowd during "All My Friends." I can only attribute the difficulty of finding a decent video of the crowd filmed from the floor to the fact that almost everyone near the stage was too swept up in the moment to turn their cameras on the hill.

Don B: The Cave Singers packed a lot of magic into the the Jansport Secret Show that transported a bus load of Seattleites into the woods for a campfire show. 

Tony: Bumbershoot hit my live-music pleasure nodes big-time. Old-school funk and soul brilliance from Seattle's own mighty Wheedle's Groove collective, Booker T, and Solomon Burke (just weeks before his passing) freed the minds (and asses) of hundreds of Bumbershooters; The Clientele brought Brit-pop luminescence; The Dandy Warhols and The Raveonettes held the batcave contingent with sexy sets; Visqueen offered power pop fizzier than a vigorously-shaken bottle of Korbel; and alt-country chanteuse Neko Case filled the arena stage with gorgeous sadness.

Great as so many of the established acts were, though, Bumbershoot opened my ears to several great outfits that previously hovered just below the radar (mine, at least). The Redwood Plan's pogo-worthy brand of new-new-wave impressed me mightily; LA indie rockers HEALTH played like shoegazers possessed by restless evil demons; and Georgia's atomic-powered prog/metal/surf guitar band Baroness piledrove a packed Center Square with the Fest's finest hard rock performance. Oh, yeah, and Anvil rocked.

Don B: Billy Bragg too!

Audrey: Bumbershoot was a great spot for witnessing band-on-band interviews in eco-friendly murder vans.

Josh: And Courtney Love's rambler of a secret show plus extended monologue in an upstairs room at McCaw made the entire festival worthwile. All that I'll add about Bumbershoot is that I don't regret staying to the rain-drenched last song of the festival, if only because the Thermals rewarded the crowd's endurance with a Weezer cover during their encore. I'm pretty sure that I like Weezer covers a whole lot more than actual Weezer now. So much so that I skipped their mainstage set to dash over to the Paramount for another, less embarrassing, nostalgia act (Pavement).

Audrey: That Pavement show was definitely one of my highlights for the year. Miss you already, Malkmus!

Josh: Despite our wealth of shows booked in the great outdoors or in big beautiful theaters, there's something great about a small live show pushing capacity. For me, at Neumo's, these included Foals at the inaugural CityArts Fest and Tokyo Police Club bringing their spotlights, seizure strobes, and sweaty intensity to just the right-sized venue.

Audrey: Yes, that August mini-heat wave Tokyo Police Club show had an emphasis on the sweaty. Other sweaty shows at Neumo's: the always raucous Man Man and the one-two having-a-moment punch of Sleigh Bells and Yeasayer. Speaking of having a moment, how did it take me till 2010 to see The Low Anthem? Or, for that matter, the Morning Benders?

Tony: Hearing legendary garage-rock shaman Roky Erickson tear through several of his finest odes to thwarted desire and two-headed dogs, backed by a bunch of young guns who played like their lives hinged on it, was pure ecstasy.

MvB: At the Comet, the improv jazz of the Water Babies and the big jazz band of the Zubatto Syndicate left me feeling glad to be alive.

Don: The Song Show with Damien Jurado, Macklemore, Jesse Sykes, and Tomo Nakayama (of Grand Hallway) at The Triple Door; Screeching Weasel at The Showbox; and the Cumulus Festival at the Mars Bar and the Funhouse are among my favorite local shows of the year.

MvB: Down at the Columbia City Theatre I stumbled into the phenomenon that is Drew Grow & the Preachers Wives. 

Tony: Yes, they provided some of the most stunning moments of Columbia City Theater's first month of free shows. The venue's offered varied and tasty bills, packed with everything from great garage rock (Thee Sgt Major III) to seriously kicking hip hop shows by Mash Hall and Dyme Def, among others. The CCT show that knocked off my socks with the highest velocity? The sorta-farewell set by the Whore Moans, who retired their crudely attention-getting name in favor of the more-palatable-to-bookers moniker Hounds of the Wild Hunt. Their last show as the Whore Moans was, simply put, the most shit-sharp tight, sweatily energetic, raucous, utterly joyous hour-plus I spent in a Seattle rock club in I dunno how long.

Josh: Any albums in heavy-rotation on your music playing device of choice?

Constance: My fave album of '10 was Danny Michel's Sunset Sea. Because I lurve him.

Josh: I loved Vampire Weekend's Contra so much that I didn't begrudge them for getting too sick to play Marymoor (they did give a great Sasquatch headlining set and made up for their cancellation with two awesome shows at the Paramount). I think that I was among the few people who actually liked MGMT's Congratulations better than Oracular Spectacular; so much so that I found much of their Capitol Hill Block Party set mostly enjoyable despite the festival's usual crowd management horrorshow.

Audrey: Albums I played the shit out of in '10 include (but are not limited to): Pomegranates' One of Us, Hurricane Bells' Tonight is the Ghost, The Postelles' self-titled debut, Wavves' King of the Beach, and Local Natives' Gorilla Manor. I also returned to Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2011 marks its tenth anniversary) and Cut Copy's In Ghost Colours (in anticipation of their new release next month).

MvB: I've been listening to Icelandic band Seabear's We Built a Fire to make it through our La Niña winter.

Josh: What's on the horizon to start filling your 2011 with musical memories?

Don: As a twist, here are the five shows I'm already looking forward to going to next year. Dashboard Confessional at Neumo's on 1/13, Forgetters at the Vera Project on 1/30, The Get Up Kids at Neumo's on 2/1, Social Distortion, Lucero, Chuck Ragan at the Showbox SoDo on 2/13, and The Dismemberment Plan at the Showbox SoDo on 3/12.

Josh: Aaaaah! 2010's reunion that I never dreamed to hope for was the utterly satisfying heartbreak of Carissa's Wierd at the Showbox; this year, it's the Dismemberment Plan at the Showbox. That's miraculous enough to overcome the SoDo's deficiencies. I'm also looking forward to seeing what Adam Zacks comes up with for Sasquatch's tenth anniversary lineup at the Gorge, though I wish that a few more hotel beds would show up closer to the festival to make the four-day experience a bit less rustic or highway-dependent.

What about you? Favorites of 2010? What's on your horizon for oh-leven?