Recent Stories with tag indie

Despite the blustery weather, I'm heading downtown for a special evening at the Crocodile tonight because Apples in Stereo are headlining, on tour for their new album Travellers in Space and Time, "50 minutes of songs about the wonderful world of the future, where we’ll all dance in interstellar nightclubs with ambassadors from other worlds, while still worrying about whether our boyfriends/girlfriends/robotic-love-units are staying faithful," according to the A.V. Club.

Middle set is from L.A.'s Fol Chen, the "most whacked-out concept band since GWAR." Paste magazine praised their penchant for "electro-fey devices: cheesy '80s keys, propulsive beats, sporadic strummy guitars that bounce between channels and, of course, xylophone," but it's important to note that they're high-concept as well. Their album Part II: The New December picks up where John Shade, Your Fortune's Made left off:... (more)

The Columbia City Theater (Facebook) is a music club to fall in love with. It re-re-re-re-opened (the old vaudeville hall has been around since 1917, in various guises) in June of this year, and vaulted into the Seattle Weekly's "Best of Seattle" list less than two months later.

Before we go behind-the-scenes, here's the lowdown. You'll find the Theater at 4916 Rainier Avenue South, which is just beyond the Columbia City Cinema. (Take the #7 or #8 bus or light rail--the last light rail train leaves SeaTac for downtown at 12:10 a.m., Monday through Saturday.) It's adjacent to the award-winning pizzeria Tutta Bella, who serve up the eats in The Bourbon, Columbia City Theater's bar. The bar is open seven days a week, 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.

The bourbon-heavy cocktail list ($8-$10) features pre-Prohibition favorites (Mint Julep, Derby, Commodore), as well as some rye (Red Hook; Fratelli Cocktail, with Fernet Branca; Diamondback). Bar entertainment ranges from djs to karaoke to live music, and on nights when there's a show in the theatre, you can watch the show projected live on a screen. Happy Hour most of the week is 4-7 p.m., and all day Monday, and brings you such wonders as $5 pitchers of High Life and $3 wells.

Past the bar, on your left, is the entrance to the theater, which has a bar of its own. It's an intimate shoebox space, though it holds over 200, and the acoustics require no over-amplification. The ambiance--the curtained stage and brass lighting fixtures and brick walls--makes this unlike any other music club you're likely to step into in town.... (more)

15th Ave Coffee & Tea has its own rain table.

I'm not too proud to admit I've been in 15th Ave Coffee & Tea a few times, drawn like a hapless mariner by the siren song of the Clover machine. But it wasn't until I read this Reuters story on Starbucks' experiment with "indie" stores in Seattle that I learned how good we really have it.

First of all, the wine and beer are Seattle options. You're not going to find that elsewhere. Why? Because we're adults, in Seattle. We can have nice things. The rest of the country--pfft. Scrubs. Also, Howard Schultz lives here. You know Howard, he likes a glass of wine now and then.

(Luckily, he can still afford the nice stuff. The New York Times reports:

Howard Schultz of Starbucks requested last year that his base salary be reduced from $1.19 million to $6,900 as "a personal contribution to cost-control efforts," according to a company statement. However, the company later gave him a $1 million "discretionary bonus" that nearly made up for his sacrifice.)

The alcohol is an interesting "experiment," because Starbucks tells Reuters: "We have no plans at this time to offer these beverages in other locations."

Secondly, we get movie night. I hadn't realized this, either. At Roy St. Coffee & Tea (not on Roy Street, so don't get lost) at the north end of Broadway, they've been showing independent films, with a preference for shorts. And they're participating in Capitol Hill's Blitz Art Walk this Thursday with a jazz/modern dance combo--speaking of things that won't play in Peoria. (The 15th location is also doing jazz CD release parties.)

I know that in some circles it is not permitted to admit that you go to Starbucks, let alone an appropriated-hipster Starbucks, but I have to say: Seattle, we're getting a pretty sweet deal with this experiment. Now, we're owed--a lot--because of the Sonics. But I blame the NBA more than Howard, and I'm willing to let him try to make amends.

The beer and wine and jazz and movies and fireworks are nice. Let's keep this ball rolling. If you have suggestions, I'll collect them and forward to Starbucks.

(Last-minute Tuesday)

• Early this month, Animal Collective and Danny Perez displayed ODDSAC, a "new synthesis of music and film" at the Guggenheim museum in New York--watch the visual album @ the Egyptian tonight. On Wednesday, Deakin (Josh from Animal Collective) plays a solo set with Jabon & Peppermint Majesty @ Neumo's

Wednesday

• The Low Anthem can go from haunted to hootenanny several times within a tracklisting. Armed with classic (bellows organ), creative (cymbals played with a violin bow), and innovative (spoiler alert: group cell phone experimentation) instrumentation the transitions from the heartbreakingly effective weepers to the upbeat foot stompers provide jarring relief. With the delightfully creepy goth-folk and blues of Timber Timbre @ the Crocodile

Thursday

• Opening: Seattle Opera's Young Artists take on Ariadne auf Naxos (through April 11) @ the Meydenbauer Center
• Gerard Schwarz conducts the Seattle Symphony, a little Janacek and Prokofiev, plus Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (through April 3) @ Benaroya Hall
• The League of Women Voters sorts out how to make democracy work with a panel including Nancy Amidei, director of the Civic Engagement Project; Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large; and author Paul Loeb (Soul of a Citizen) @ Town Hall
• Owl City goes from his parents' basement to playing @ the Paramount
• Citizen Cope and his nappy dreads play his first of three dates @ the Showbox
• FREE: Daniel Atkinson, a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at the UW, talks about slavery and the musical legacy of the Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary @ the Northwest African American Museum

Friday

• FREE: noir novelist Walter Mosley returns with a Leonard McGill story Known to Evil @ Seattle Public Central Library
• Juno may have introduced you to the Moldy Peaches; half-Peach Adam Green plays from his album Minor Love @ Chop Suey
• The Morning Benders have really come into their own on new album Big Echo.  Tonight, first they play a free all-ages set @ Sonic Boom Capitol Hill, then a 21+ show @ the Croc

Saturday

• Michael Buble seems unable to escape appearing in public without being stalked by a velociraptor or two. The possibility of ferocious dinosaurs at the performance might add extra incentive to the "Crazy Love" arena tour @ Key Arena

Sunday

• FREE: Frances McCue and photographer Mary Randlett give a talk--part travelogue, part memoir, part literary scholarship--called "The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting the Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo" @ Seattle Public Central Library
• California-sounding Florida band Surfer Blood gets the kids riled up @ the Vera Project
• Hugh Cornwell of seminal UK punk band The Stranglers plays a solo show @ the Tractor

Monday

• FREE: David Laskin reads from The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War @ Seattle Public Central Library

Tuesday

• Opening: The musical Dreamgirls runs sassily through April 11 @ the Paramount
• SOLD OUT: Brandi Carlile does her singer/songwriter thing @ the Crocodile
• FREE: PNB education manager and Tudor Choir founder and director Doug Fullington talks with choreographer Mark Morris @ Town Hall

You knew when Kabletown bought NBC that it wouldn't be long before Cablevision went on a shopping spree of its own. The blog paidContent claims--in an exclusive--that a deal is being inked between Cablevision's Rainbow Media and Gothamist, LLC, worth $5 million to $6 million. (As a former editor of Seattlest, I need to run home and check my mailbox for substantial backpay.)

Not to be outdone, Business Insider reports that the two have been trying to hash out an agreement for months, but that nothing is official. So far, no one's commenting on the record. paidContent adds that the price includes "a performance-based earnout," and that Rainbow Media's strategy is to use Gothamist's indie city sites to support its "indie-local franchise for Sundance and IFC."

Since Gothamist doesn't pay its rank-and-file contributors, offering site editors only a small monthly stipend, I'm curious to see what corporate ownership will do to the thrill of writing for an "indie" site for free. Most importantly, how will this affect our viewing of the sluttish American Apparel "lace" models on Seattlest? Only time will tell.

Breaking Upwards Movie Trailer from Breaking Upwards on Vimeo.

Not since the Stanford Experiment has someone come up with such a jarring hypothetical "Now let's see what happens" scenario. In Breaking Upwards, director/actor Daryl Wein and actress Zoe Lister-Jones film their own break-up by degrees. Instead of quitting each other cold turkey, they take days "off" from their relationship. The results, not wholly unexpectedly, don't go according to plan. Film School Rejects gives the film, on the other hand, an A. High Times says it kicks the shit out of Garden State.

Tonight at 7 p.m., Breaking Upwards plays at Central Cinema, as part of STIFF Night for February. Pizza, beer, and a break-up movie: we've got your perfect Thursday night right here.

My New Year's resolution was to see 50 shows in 2009. I thought this was reasonable for a person with a job that requires me to get up at 6 a.m. Yet, like most people, I did not fulfill my New Year's resolution. I got 39 nights of rock and roll in with 122 bands. Not too shabby, but I'll try to do better in 2010. My five favorites are recounted for you below.

#5. Classics of Love, Mike Park, Dateless, The Damage Done - The Grn Strp House - 3/14/09

As someone who discovered punk rock in the early nineties, it makes sense that Operation Ivy is one of my favorite bands. The Bay Area ska/punk band was an influence to a whole decade of punks and made Lookout Records famous well before Green Day came around. When singer Jesse Michaels disappeared after their first record, punk rock hearts were crushed everywhere. He had a short comeback with Big Rig and then got back into the swing of things with reggae/punk band Common Rider. His new project Classics of Love wanders back into straight punk songs.

I got to see them with Skankin' Pickle and Asian Man Records mastermind Mike Park as well as two local groups in a small punk house near the freeway. There is absolutely no better situation than a hundred and fifty or so people crammed into the living room, their breath condensing on the walls, waiting for their hero to take the stage so they can rock the hell out. When Park started playing "The Crowd" by Op IV and Michaels joined him on vocals, it was like it was 1989 all over again and we were ready to take on the world. When Classics of Love played, we did, in fact, rock the hell out.

#4. Cumulus Festival - Chop Suey/King Cobra/Vera Project - 1/23/09 to 1/25/09

The second I heard about the Cumulus Festival, I bought a three-day pass. While three days of (mostly) instrumental music might not be everyone's cup of tea, I was super excited. Seattle is the perfect place to foster this genre of music. With extraordinarily talented musicians and long, dreary winters, we are primed to create a musical revolution. The wide variety of bands at the show underscores the depth of talent we have here and the wide variation that is prevalent in the instrumental music genre.

I spent several hours that weekend riding on emotional crescendos and decrescendos, shaking my head at ridiculous musicianship, basking in various light shows, and no small amount of rocking out. I discovered a ton of new and awesome bands. I shared a unique experience with a couple hundred like-minded people. I am very much looking forward to Cumulus Festival 2010.

#3. Grand Hallway + Seattle Rock Orchestra, The Maldives - Fremont Abbey - 9/17/09

There are bands that simply break your heart with their beauty. Grand Hallway and The Maldives are two of those bands and they played together on the same night. The Fremont Abbey has amazing acoustics for orchestral pop and alt-country ballads. I wallowed around in the sorrow and beauty and reverb and melodies. I'm man enough to admit I cried a little bit during "Sirens," the saddest Grand Hallway song ever. It was a particularly emotional night for me anyways, but two beautifully melancholy bands put it over the edge. I'll remember this show for quite some time.

#2. Sunny Day Real Estate, The Jealous Sound - Paramount - 10/16/09

Though I discovered punk in the early nineties, I had started to grow up and get all emo by about 1995. It was fortunate, then, that Sunny Day Real Estate released their first record the year before. I played that record so much that I even memorized the gaps between the songs. When the second record came out, I did the same and made up my own lyrics since the liner notes didn't include them. When I went away to college, however, Sunny Day Real Estate and I went on separate paths.

At the Paramount, hundreds of people got to share in the heartfelt reunion of an influential Seattle band. Sunny Day sounded amazing. Their songs were tightened up on a month of touring and they were just as emotional and real as ever. No giant light shows or ridiculous theatrics, just them and us in a huge concert venue. It was a great finale. Meanwhile, the new song they debuted made us think that their story might not be over yet. We'll see what 2010 brings.... (more)

On Thursday night, Mew, Copenhagen's angelic-voiced earnest dream rock trio will pay a visit to Seattle in support of this summer's lengthily-titled No More Stories Are Told Today . . . [I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away]. Despite the dour and long--but still-tweetable--title, the album finds the band a member short, borderline happy, occasionally danceable, and occasionally dabbling in singsong autotune. That said, it's more of a modest detour from on the spaced out guitar fog, glittery falsettos, and stormy prog rumbling counterpoints that you came to know and love with And the Glass Handed Kites.

At shows, the band provides projected visual accompaniments to help transport the audience into their intergalactic dreams and cosmic mental voyages. Attack dogs chase through the rain, tiny stuffed animals float through woodlands while playing tiny instruments, creepy dolls, or just swirling color saturated screensavers. While I've probably done a fine job of making this all sound unsufferably pretentious, it's actually all that you'd want from an indie rock show with a few bells, a couple whistles, and three affable Danes who are bound to be swarmed with admirers after the encore. 

Want them to warm you up on Thursday night on Neumo's dime? We have a pair of tickets to give to one of you loyal Sunbreak readers. Tweet a hypnotic and Mew-inspired alternate album title to @thesunbreak. We'll pick a winner on Wednesday night.

• Mew plays Thursday, December 10, at Neumo's. Doors open at 8 p.m. and tickets are $14 (ticketswest).

It's hard to upstage, in writing, how much we need music. The description isn't even an echo. If you were there, on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder with the strangers and singing along, it might spark a memory. Or it might not. And anyway, that's not what I'm interested in here.

I was at two shows this week, the Mountain Goats at the Showbox Market, which is downtown's gritty rock palace, a sprawling, sunken main floor overlooked by terraced bars; and Faun Fables at Neumo's, along with Chop Suey the ideal of the indie Capitol Hill music club: a shoebox of a room with a concession stand of a bar at the side.

The Showbox was already full during Owen Palett's Final Fantasy set; he closed with what he said was a song by Theodor Adorno: "Independence is no solution for modern babies." Babies (read "hipsters"), we learned, just want to dance. Adorno, I have just read, was critical of the replacement of art's merit by its social value. Music becomes a fetish when you enjoy it because other people like it.

The Mountain Goats

That is not John Darnielle's problem. His album The Life of the World to Come is twelve songs all titled after Biblical verses, selections from Hebrews 11:40 to Matthew 25:21. Here's an mp3 of "Genesis 3:23," which contains the chorus, "I used to live here." It's about a return to a childhood home, and there is also a superposition of a naive Eden of faith, "creeds and prayers that he can't wholly buy into" these days. (Maybe this is also why he's at the keyboard more often on this album, which impersonates a heretic organist's hymnal.)

Darnielle is a strange apparition in concert--skipping about the stage, face contorted in a middle-schooler's rockgod transport, he can remind you of David Byrne's spasmodic too-much-coffee guy except without the cool, self-appraising distance. Between songs, he drops little drawled hints as to their inspiration in a pleasantly low-key manner that contrasts with his higher, forced-nasal singing register.

He's funny, disarming, and a master of unsettling emotional harmonics. "Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle" was prefaced by an explanation of his delight at unexpectedly freeing a "little dude" instead of the princess. That bright "8-bit choir" catharsis has its malevolent bass counterpart in "Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod," as the protagonist is battered by an abusive drunk.

The new album is more reflective than entrail-spilling, and as likely to question its Biblical sources ("Romans 10:9" contrasts the redemption of confession against taking your medication before you have anything to confess) as to quote them. The religious lessons that Darnielle has learned, or found, are in his music, despite the nods to the Bible.... (more)

Hey, people with no plans yet, Brooklyn's indie darlings Bishop Allen are in town tonight, at Capitol Hill's Chop Suey. Tomorrow night they play at PDX's Doug Fir Lounge if that gives you any idea of the cool embodied, however skinnily. The new album is GRRR...--be nice to them because Pitchfork sure wasn't. On before them are Seattle darlings Throw Me The Statue, whom we've reviewed with appreciation before:

They’re sharp instrumentalists live, and are exploring an interesting, eclectic sound that combines roller-rink new wave and indie-rock with sturdily-versatile real drumming and a dash of world-music percussion. "Yucatan Gold" sounded fab, and TMTS have managed to capture lightning in a bottle twice in the form of a second great single ("Lo-Fi Goon" sounds like Weezer fronted by synth-toting Muppets, and it too came off aces live).

For just $12, you can't go wrong. Doors are at 9 p.m. and "infectious...hard to dislike" New Yorkers Darwin Deez open.

More elfin Icelandic charm than anyone can really resist is bottled up inside Ólöf Arnalds, the folk magician. For her encore at the Crocodile last Friday night, she stood alone at the front of the stage and sang a little something from an oral Icelandic saga.

If she wants, she can produce what sounds like birdsong--a piping soprano--but she also sang (with her guitarist, whose name I am not even going to hazard a guess at spelling) a series of older country songs from the likes of John Prine ("In Spite of Ourselves") and Hank Williams, and sounded straight out of Patsy Cline-era Nashville. It's not that surprising that these hardscrabble American pioneers have written songs that speak to the Icelandic experience--and not just because Iceland is bankrupt recently. Subsistence living is Icelandic to the core.

Her debut album title translates as "Now and Then," and often sounds like harpist Mary O'Hara, if your Babelfish wasn't working properly. There's both an ancient troubadour quality, and, given that the songs are about friends and people she knows, an intimate feeling, as if wherever she's singing is just a larger version of her living room.

After they broke for "intermission," playing two songs quietly as background music for drink-ordering and conversation, the crowd's murmur threatened to overwhelm their next song. "How are you feeling?" Ólöf asked sweetly. "We're feeling pretty good, too...up here on the stage, singing, now that intermission is over." And the hubbub stopped. Ólöf runs a tight living room.