Two of the best acts I saw at Timberfest last July are each headlining live shows Saturday night. Flip a coin, play eenie meenie minie moe, or invent a Star Trek transporter and hop between both shows. But whatever you do, catch one of them if you can.
Seattle quintet Smokey Brights land at the Tractor Tavern tomorrow evening in support of Taste for Blood, their newest full-length. The record just dropped this week, and it’s the sound of a band that’s corralled a broad, sometimes oil-and-water disparate overflow of influences to exhilarating effect.
What the Smokeys have done is find the through line between scruffy blue-collar rock, new wave, Memphis soul, and shoegazer atmospherics. It’s right there on the title track that opens the new record: Michael Kalnoky’s textural guitar and the rush of Kim West’s synths are cut through by Ryan Devlin’s slurred, ragged voice, and it’s like hearing Bruce Springsteen narrate a futuristic film noir. On “Catacomb,” West and Devlin harmonize with the forlorn beauty of X’s Exene Cervenka and John Doe on a goth tip, as Kalnoky’s six-string switches off between colorful soloing and concise post-punk momentum. Sprinkles of psychedelia (“Windjammer”) and swooning folk balladry (“Waiting on a Light”) surface as well.
An unerring knack for melody and hooks keeps these seemingly contradictory plates spinning. The Smokeys’ formidable technical chops never get in the way of a deep soul groove (as on the gorgeous, slow-burning “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”), or an anthemic chorus (“Put Your Guns Away”), and they deliver a go-for-broke live experience. I’ve long given up on predicting a Next Big Thing among Northwest bands, but the combination of adventuresome risk-taking and universal catchiness on Taste for Blood could really reach beyond state borders in a big way, if given the chance.
Smokey Brights have plenty of help ringing in their record release , incidentally: In what’s gotta be one of the more stacked local bills of the last several weeks, Portland powerhouse Kelli Schaefer and the mighty Ravenna Woods open things up. (Tickets for the 9:00 p.m. show, $12 advance, can be purchased here.)
One of the cultural highlights putting its ink-stained and staple-wounded fingerprints all over Seattle this month is the Short Run Comix and Art Festival, a celebration of this town’s comix and arts community showcasing scores of independently-wrought ‘zines, comics, and small-press books of every stripe.
Short Run’s full-on Festival at Washington Hall sports an incredibly cool itinerary (take a look for yourself), so it comes as no surprise that the Festival’s putting on a Saturday night Beach Party-themed concert at the Hall with two terrific regional bands playing for dirt cheap ($5 advance, show at 8:00 p.m., tickets available here). I’ve prattled on ad nauseum in these electronic pages about headliners La Luz, and they’ll surely tear things up gloriously. But dear Lord in silk jammies, do Portland-based co-headliners The Shivas deliver the loud live goods.
The Shivas’ afternoon set at Timber effectively blew the top of my head off, and provided proof positive that a great rock band doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to move you to your core. Like La Luz, The Shivas use surf rock as one of their starting points, but if La Luz are the ice-cube cool leather-jacketed gang that saunters into the party with smoldering confidence, The Shivas are the restless kids who crash through the door and go apeshit. Strains of raw psychedelia careen through their sharp tunes, and in a live setting The Shivas’ guitars twang, roar, and sting like Link Wray and the Jesus and Mary Chain going at each other with broken bottles.
Their fab, recently-released long-player You Know What to Do serves as way more than just fodder for onstage rave-ups, too. The volcanic garage-punk stutter of the title track and the hyper-driven “Manson Girls” fire on all eight cylinders, but much of You Know What to Do consists of irresistibly ragged-but-right pop songs that refuse to leave your head. The hand-clap-driven “You Make Me Wanna Die” and the sloppily-winsome “Strokin’ Off” sound beamed in from a universe where the Ramones and the Crystals play the same school dance, while the narcotically sexy “And On” even throws in some swinging organ and purring male/female vocals that’ll curl your toes. Live, though, you can expect The Shivas’ considerable pop smarts to be goosed by the kind of drum-pummeling, guitar-attacking frenzy from which rock and roll dreams are born.
One unintended omission: Another strong Northwest band who played Timberfest ’14, Lonesome Shack, play the Blue Moon tomorrow. Their minimalist variety of alien blues means now you’ve got THREE solid regional acts fresh from the Timber stage to choose from.