Recent Stories with tag Metric

The opening half of last night's Deck the Hall Ball was a Whitman's sampler of poppy rock acts that might have seemed more at home at a fundraiser for KEXP than a holiday party for The End. The doors opened at the after school special hour of 4:30 p.m. to admit the around-the-block lines of mostly underagers waiting to get a prime spot for Muse.

By the time Visqueen finished their sound check, introduced Rachel's niece to the stage, and changed into their rocking clothes, the concrete arena had filled to respectable capacity for the hometown opening set. Each band fit about six songs into their thrifty twenty minute set: Vampire Weekend mostly played the hits from their self-titled debut and threw in "Cousins" [youtube] as a taste of next month's Contra. ...

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Last spring Phoenix released Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, the feel-good album of the year that felt like a poppy antidote so much of the seriousness and bearded heft overtaking so many iPods. In Seattle, we eagerly scoured tour schedules and festival programs hoping that if they didn't at least grace us with their presence they'd at least make a stop within roadtripping distance.

All of that waiting was starting to feel futile, but now, at last, it seems that we haven't been forsaken by the Parisian electro-pop act that infused so many summer days and inspired so many YouTube mixes and re-mixes. They were just waiting for our desperation to reach levels significant enough to draw us into a cavernous venue for a commercial rock station's holiday party.

Sure, a spot headlining a medium-sized headlining spot would have been ideal, but it's still feels like a great winter gift that they'll be in town at all. You'll find them in the warm-up portion of a startlingly good lineup for the End's annual Deck the Hall Ball on December 15th at the WaMu Theater (the name survived the bank, apparently).

Moody English alternative rockers Muse headline the event; Jared Leto's gift to guyliner, 30 Seconds to Mars, gets the second-highest billing. Emily Haines's live-wire rock act Metric and the poppy preppy guys from Vampire Weekend open the show....

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There was one non-negotiable must-see at Bumbershoot Monday, and that was the Lost writers panel. Sorry Say Hi, Black Joe Lewis, Grand Hallway, and the Lonely Forest, you were playing at the wrong time; there was no way to catch any of your sets and also be back at the Leo K. Theatre early enough to snag some seats. I wasn't alone: the nerds had shown up early, and there was a long line of folks who were just not going to get in. For those of us who made it, however, we were treated to a lively discussion between Entertainment Weekly's Lost guru Jeff Jensen and Lost executive producer-scribes Carlton Cuse, Eddy Kitsis, and Adam Horowitz.

The show is three weeks into filming its sixth and final season, which Kitsis claimed would be "all killer, no filler." The writers showed the three teasers previously viewed at Comic-Con (and subsequently all over the tubes), which seem to indicate that perhaps time has been rebooted following Juliet detonating a hydrogen bomb in the season finale. Everyone will have to wait...

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