Tag Archives: columbia city

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Golden Gardens Bring Lovestruck ‘Narcissus’ to Columbia City

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[Tonight, indie label Neon Sigh hosts Golden Gardens, Toykoidaho and Kelli Francis Corrado at  Columbia City Theater, 4916 Rainier Ave S. Doors at 8 p.m. Tickets, $8 at the door, are still available.]

Golden Gardens capture the flush of first love with their shoe gazing pop, complete with fluttering tummy butterflies and tingling in your toes. Tonight, they’ll be unveiling four new songs from Narcissus, their EP due out on June 11th, and fans should be tickled dream-pop pink.

With their first two records, vocalist Aubrey Violet Rachel Bramble and instrumentalist Greg Alexander Joseph Neville established their sound as a slow-cadenced alchemy of seraphic layered vocals on soothing volume, wrapped in gossamer guitar and percussion (think lovechild of Cocteau Twins, Massive Attack, Blonde Redhead, and Washed Out). The duo’s new tracks showcase their maturity and progression, but the creative combination is just as glimmery as before.

Aubrey Violet Rachel Bramble of Golden Gardens. (photo by Odawni AJ Palmer)

“My Viridescent Heart” births the EP with a resplendent ambient breeze, and the next two tracks are metered by a mesh of percussive textures. The closing track, “Blue Eyes Of a Broken Doll,” launches with a cascade of plucky strings — something new to the band’s sound — and it ends with Bramble’s celestial professions of breathtaking love swallowed in a wash of woolly distortion.

Like GG’s earlier work, Narcissus traverses the cycle of infatuation both lyrically and sonically: Bramble and Neville create an infinite soundspace that’s almost impossible not to fall into. But Bramble’s vocals are louder and self-assured on the new material, not the distant echoey layered vocals from previous records. Her words are crisp but just as lollipop-sweet as before, the clarity adding a layer of intimacy and sopranic charm. Neville expands the instrument-osphere with transportive musicianship, using strings as percussion and dropping in new fuzzy sounds as well.

SPIN dubbed Columbia City Theater “The city’s finest sounding room,” and it should be a perfect setting for all the atmospherics.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

Columbia City’s Ark Lodge Cinemas Opening with an LOTR-Bang

At long last, Columbia City is getting its movie house mojo back, with the opening of Ark Lodge Cinemas this weekend. The three-screen theater has been upgraded to Barco digital projectors, and proudly offers a fire-safety sprinkler system (it’s a long story).

That’s all to the good, because equipment is certainly going to heat up during the Lord of the Rings-athon that new owner David McRae has planned–yes, that’s the full director’s cut of each film, coming in at almost eleven-and-a-half hours. It’ll be shown on two screens (starting at 10 and 11 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, December 8 and 9); the third, upstairs salle is still under reconstruction, to open in the new year. A little Middle Earth gold will help with that.

Each film in the marathon will be followed by a concession break; after the second film, there will be pizza. Tickets to the series (no à la carte viewing) go for $25. An all-you-can-eat concession-stand offer (pop, popcorn, and pizza) goes for $20.

Also, attendees of the Lord of the Rings get first dibs on next weekend’s showings of The Hobbit, opening Friday, December 14. Moira McDonald already checked, and they’ll be showing the  2D, 24 fps version of Bilbo and friends. (Peter Jackson shot the 3D version at 48 fps, which some viewers complain looks like “soap opera-scope.” The film is also being released in a 24 fps 3D version.)

UPDATE: McRae filled us in on a few questions we had. Ark Lodge Cinemas was going to launch after the new year, but decided a holiday opening would be more fun, so all is not exactly as it will be when things are finished. Currently, the Barco projectors offer 2K lines resolution, but they’ll be upgraded. The third salle’s delayed opening is in part due to an agreement with the city to make sure the whole theater’s sprinkler system can be tested before it’s filled up with filmgoers. And regular ticket prices will be in line with other city theaters, “about $10 or $10.50,” since Ark Lodge will be showing first-run films for the delectation of locals. Interested in a visit? Take light rail. But maybe not to the LOTR-athon, because the last light rail train leaves SeaTac at 12:10 a.m.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Weekending at the VERA Project and Columbia City Theater

You know it’s the weekend when it’s time to leave Capitol Hill. So that’s what I did the last weekend of September.

That Friday night I was off to Seattle Center. I hadn’t been to the Vera Project since the all-ages venue’s Belltown days, and the last show I can remember seeing there is probably The Thermals in 2004. Part of the reason for that long absence is because the Northwest Rooms are not so convenient a location for a rock venue, and part of it is because I am now an Old.

But I couldn’t miss the chance to see uplifting and catchy California quintet Grouplove, along with the bright harmonies of Family of the Year, and so with a little bit of apprehension, I approached the Friday night show. I took the monorail from downtown (because that is a pro-tip 4 life), and arrived at the Center campus early. It was a lovely warm fall night, so I sat around the fountain and listened to the world-salsa-jazz-fusion mix over the mini-Bellagio water show while skateboarders took turns in the fountain’s bowl.

The Vera was a welcoming place and–phew–I wasn’t the only Old there. I saw a few cool parents in the back of the room, though I don’t know how cool they were with the copious amounts of late summer pot smoke during Family of the Year’s opening set. The quirkiest thing about the venue is the gender-neutral bathrooms. I understand we’re all open-minded and not homophobic or transphobic or whatever, but ultimately, all that means is twice the number of toilets covered in piss.

Grouplove was befitting their name. The LA-based band is feel-good orchestral pop, and their debut full-length Never Trust a Happy Song, features sunny sounds and lyrics about naked kids and funny bunny weed. Christian Zucconni and Hannah Hooper are supercute together, and they even let Irish bassist Sean Gadd have a turn with leading vocals.

Saturday night I was down to Columbia City, via bus and light rail. I always enjoy that trip to the Columbia City Theater. It makes me feel oh-so-urban to take a bus from the Hill downtown, then the light rail, and through a residential neighborhood to the venue. Saturday night there was a firetruck outside the CCT, after a guy passed out (or had a seizure, depending on who you ask) during the first couple songs of beloved Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman’s set.

But Jens wasn’t even aware of the EMTs and continued through his show, which was a mixture of old stuff from the back catalogue (“I Saw Her In The Anti War Demonstration”), his big hits (“Black Cab,” “The Opposite of Hallelujah,” “Sipping on Sweet Nectar”), and songs off new EP An Argument With Myself (“I Broke Up A Fight,” “Cowboy Boots”). Check out the setlist here. Jens was as witty and humble and dear as ever, and after his encore cover of Ten City’s “All I Want is Love,” he snapped his way into “Pocketful of Money,” and left the crowd feverishly whispering, “I’ll come running with a heart on fire.”

After the encore, Jens announced: “I want to meet you and dance with you,” and many took advantage of the offer, standing in an orderly Swedish-inspired line for a photo, chat, or autograph. Instead, I took advantage of the Columbia City Theater’s late-night happy hour ($3 wells, $4.50 doubles starting at 11 p.m.) and chatted with folks from as far as away as Missoula, Walla Walla, and Portland who had made the trip just to hear Jens live.

That Saturday was also the night I learned the hard way that while the light rail runs till 1 a.m., the last train to run the full length of the route leaves from SeaTac at 12:05 a.m., which I discovered when the end of the line was Beacon Hill. Luckily, a 36 bus headed downtown showed up quickly, and I took that till I was at 12th and Jackson, a mile and a half straight-shot from home.

So I walked along 12th, peeking into the business establishments along the way: the Ethiopian clubs, Ba Bar, the new sports bar near Seattle University. Canon still hadn’t figured out temperature control, and Eltana’s late-night bagel window was closed the one time I would have considered stopping for one.

Arts & Entertainment, Music, Theatre

Just a Wonderful Summer Weekend in Seattle

Living in a city for a while can get you jaded. I’ve been in Seattle for going on ten years now, so I’ve felt my share of frustrations–but then again, no place is perfect. However, lately I’ve been seeing Seattle with fresh eyes and really appreciating our little burg for what it is. The recent Frank Bruni piece made me realize just how lucky we have it when it comes to amazing locally produced food. The current heatwave over most of the country makes me thankful for a July with temps in the 60s and 70s instead of triple digits. And last weekend made me appreciate the diverse cultural experiences Seattle has to offer. (Block party, this does not mean you.)

STAGEright is a young theatre company, both in the sense that the troupe has only been around a couple years (since November 2009) and that most of the actors are fresh out of college. Working out of the Belltown Freehold Theatre space on a sparse window-filled set, they’re mounting an intimate production of Sarah Ruhl’s The Melancholy Play (through July 31). It’s an early work from the Pulitzer-winning playwright, as evident by some of the script’s broader strokes. Ostensibly, it’s the story of a young woman named Tilly who suffers from severe melancholy that somehow makes her look so lovely everyone she meets instantly falls in love with her: tailor Frank, hair stylist Frances, nurse Jane, and even her therapist Lorenzo—until she suddenly gets happy and everyone finds her insufferable. And while the acting at the beginning was a little shaky, the cast quickly found its stride without a dud in the bunch. Special props to Megan Tyrrell, playing Tilly, who is just as charming and lovable as the part requires, and Mike Jones, who in playing the role of suave indeterminately European Lorenzo, has very little room for error. It is refreshing and exhilarating to find a young company able to pull off the work of a playwright as complicatedly playful as Sarah Ruhl.

Meanwhile, it was just a light rail ride from downtown to a whole new world, i.e., Columbia City. And the more I go to Columbia City Theater, the more I appreciate everything about the venue, from the friendly folks who work there to the openness of the space, and of course, the wide range of acts that grace the stage. This night was no exception, with a lineup of Tony Kevin Jr., Kris Orlowski, and Youth Rescue Mission. (Pro tip: If you’re ever trying to figure out who’s in a band, it’s always the guys wearing hats.) Orlowski does the heartfelt singer-songwriter thing capably, and was also gracious enough to bring up members of Tony Kevin Jr. a few times to serve as backup and provide just a few more harmony vocals. Though Orlowski is relatively new to the scene, he had a big established pack of superfans, at the front of the crowd, singing their hearts out with Kris.

There was also a group of superfans who knew every lyric from Youth Rescue Mission, a high-energy versatile four-piece new to town, improbably hailing from Montana (in that I cannot think of a single other band from Montana) with a great debut (stream or buy at their Bandcamp page). They’re a flexible group, with members switching up instruments and each taking their turn providing lead vocals, and in that way–as well as in the range of song types and structures–they’re reminiscent of Broken Social Scene. And/or they’re The Head and the Heart if THatH actually, consistently, lived up to the hype. (ZING?) All Cameras On was also at the show, so let’s hope a whole bunch of mobile phone video footage gets uploaded and edited for our viewing pleasure real soon. For now, here’s a taste of Youth Rescue Mission playing “Thursday After” in their living room.

Never you fear; you too can have a similar night o’ Seattle culture of your very own. The Melancholy Play is at the Freehold till July 31. Another Sarah Ruhl work, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, opens at ACT on July 29. Kris Orlowski plays Bumbershoot this Labor Day weekend. Youth Rescue Mission plays the Triple Door’s Musiquarium on August 4–and they are also playing Doe Bay Fest. And heads up: another awesome new local act, Pickwick, plays Sound on the Sound’s fifth anniversary show at Columbia City Theater on August 5.