Tag Archives: Sugar Sugar Sugar band

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Your Live Music Bets for the Weekend of January 13th to the 15th

Nothin’ but nothin’ can take the wicked sting out of the current cold snap like a night packed into a local music venue. So get out there already.

Tonight (Friday, January 13):

Dick Dale, Dead Man @ The Tractor Tavern. $20 at the door. Show at 9pm.

Well before Quentin Tarantino goosed “Miserlou” into the mass pop-culture consciousness in Pulp Fiction, Dick Dale was already one of the undisputed legends of surf guitar, a virtuoso of the style who pulled dirty rock sounds into the stuttering beach party mix with volcanic ferocity; and he’s a staggering force of nature in a live setting. Get ready to frug, and to get your ears blown out.

Post Adolescence, Mothership, We Wrote the Book on Connectors, The Dignitaries @ The High Dive. $7  at the door. Show at 9pm.

Post Adolescence play winning post-punk with emotions and fun writ large in equal doses. The band’s fat and full guitar sound recalls Suede, and Johnny Straube’s tremulous tenor voice is an idiosyncratic pop taste well worth acquiring.  The ballad “Don’t Walk Away” manages to make the girls swoon while the boys air-guitar, and the band’s rockers jump out of the speakers with playful energy. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, get to the High Dive early, for Pete’s Sake: Tacoma’s Dignitaries pound out garage rock with blunt-force trauma, and We Wrote the Book on Connectors bolster their ample chops with the funniest great pop songs this side of Flight of the Conchords.

The Bad Things, Bakelite 78, Bat Country, Gunstreet Glory @ The Comet Tavern. $8 at the door. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm.

I loves me some drunken cabaret pop, and the Comet’ll have it in doses this evening. Headliners The Bad Things remain that gloriously-sodden sub-genre’s local masters, but don’t miss Bakelite 78‘s clattering Tin Pan Alley pop: Crooner/principal singer Robert Rial suggests the love child born of a bathtub-gin-fueled make-out session between Rudy Vallee and Tom Waits.

Saturday, January 14:

Allen Stone, Kris Orlowski @ The Neptune Theater. Sold Out. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm.

Allen Stone’s honey-sweetened soul voice has arrived with so much hype it’ll almost kick in your gag reflex, but there’s a reason for the mountain of press and the Conan O’ Brien slot: The kid’s got the goods. Tomorrow’s Neptune gig is sold out, which means if you ain’t got a ticket you’ll miss Stone and what’s sure to be a solid set by Kris Orlowski, a folk singer whose sandpaper pipes rough up his rootsy compositions with bracing grittiness. Stone also plays Sunday night at the Neptune with Noah Gunderson of The Courage warming things up, and yeah, that one looks to be sold out, too. Sorry to tease you like that.

 Lonesome Shack, Sugar Sugar Sugar, The Curious Mystery @ The Sunset Tavern. $7 advance, $8 at the door. Doors at 9pm, show at 10pm.

Blah, blah, another two-guy band rifling through the blues, blah, blah. But Lonesome Shack pick out a more back-porch sound than the Black Keys or My Goodness–think Leadbelly, possessing the souls of a couple of indie-rock kids. Great stuff. The Curious Mystery, meantime, sound a little like Mazzy Star’s atmospheric attempt to compose music for a Sergio Leone western after dropping acid. Oh, and I won’t prattle on any more about middle-slotters Sugar Sugar Sugar than I have already, except to say that they kick ass.

Sunday, January 15:

Orchestra Zarabanda @ Columbia City Theater. $10 at the door. Show at 8:30pm.

Seattle ensemble Orchestra Zarabanda  parlay Cuban salsa music that’s utterly free of pretense or irony: It’s just there to make you dance, and it’s played to perfection. They periodically headline classy and high-priced joints like Teatro Zinzanni, so take advantage of the chance to hear this tight and danceable rhythm collective in a classy and reasonably-priced joint like Columbia City Theater.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Musical Diamonds in the Rough: Five Northwest Music Acts to Watch in 2012 (Photo Gallery)

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Down North.
Justin Deary of Whalebones.
Shaprece.
Prom Queen.
Sugar Sugar Sugar.

Anthony Briscoe of Down North. (photo by Tony Kay)

Justin Deary of Whalebones. (photo by Tony Kay)

Soul singer Shaprece. (photo by Tony Kay)

Cult Stardom's only one evocative soundtrack away: Prom Queen. (photo by Tony Kay)

Lupe Flores lays down a hot-pants backbeat for Sugar Sugar Sugar (photo by Tony Kay)

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Down North. thumbnail
Justin Deary of Whalebones. thumbnail
Shaprece. thumbnail
Prom Queen. thumbnail
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In the last twelve months I’ve seen dozens of Northwest acts play live, and it really feels like this region’s rolling in more great music now than it has since the early 1990s. Seriously.

Dizzying variety seems to be the key to this embarrassment of sonic riches. The national media’s been atwitter about Seattle’s post-Fleet Foxes neo-folk/Americana movement, but there’s an incredible groundswell of soul, punk, hip-hop, and straight-up rock bubbling furtively around here, too. It’s made wandering into Seattle music venues in the last year a truly exciting, rewarding, and unpredictable experience.

With all the great local artists out there, it only felt right to go out on a limb and point out a few lesser-known acts with the potential to forge a major mark in 2012. Truth be told, this list could be ten times larger than it is: I could easily summon up forty or fifty worthy bands/artists here. But the five musical entities below, great as they are,  haven’t yet generated the press they deserve. Whether any of them will capture the kind of attention that’s recently been bestowed upon The Head and the Heart or Allen Stone, I don’t know. From this vantage point, though, they damn well should.

Down North: Down North could be the most unapologetically throw-down funk band in Seattle right now, and yet they’re barely registering a blip on the music-press radar. Anthony Briscoe, Down North’s lead singer, possesses an astonishing, roof-rattling voice–a room-filling sound capable of going from gravelly anguish to nimble falsettos on a hairpin turn–and he commands a stage like nobody’s business. His bandmates, meantime, match his fireworks slug-for-slug: Conrad Real’s muscular jazz-tinged drumming and Brandon Storms’ liquid basswork, in particular, form one of this town’s most fiercely funky rhythm sections.  If their incendiary live shows, several stellar new songs, and a forthcoming music video don’t send this band’s stock way up in the next 11 months, something ain’t right with the world.

Whalebones: Forget (or at least set aside) the Neil Young comparisons this Seattle space-rock trio’s netted from a few local journalists. Whalebones’ self-titled 2011 full-length provided the best interstellar musical hit I received all last year. Lead singer Justin Deary snarls and drawls with the snotty offhanded charisma of a less-unstable Anton Newcombe, and the garage and the galactic converge gloriously in his heady guitar playing. Whalebones have always sounded great live, but Deary’s onstage confidence has grown by leaps and bounds since the first time I saw the band at the West Seattle Summerfest last July: That extra push of personality could well take these guys to some serious heights.

Shaprece: Stage presence? Check. Expressive and distinctive singing? Check. A catalog of truly catchy, mostly self-written songs that combine old-school warmth and the rush of a forward-thinking future without sounding like a slave to either? Check. After being a vocal gun-for-hire for everyone from Blue Sky Black Death to Mad Rad, this talented but heretofore-untouted local singer’s moment in the spotlight is long overdue.

Prom Queen: Seattle musician/comedienne Leeni doesn’t sit still for very long, having dabbled in everything from video-game-fueled dance ditties to some wonderfully winsome pop with her duo, Romeo and Juliet. She’s struck a truly sublime vein, though, as Prom Queen. Accompanying herself on guitar with occasional self-recorded symphonette backdrops, she croons haunting originals and masterfully-retooled covers (Madonna’s “Justify My Love”, Guns ‘N Roses’ “November Rain”) that create their own dusky pocket universe. It’s a sound that straddles the perfect balance between arch theatricality and all of the deeper emotions that swirl beneath such artifice, and it’s captivating enough to connect with anyone who’s ever sat in a lonely bar contemplating the darkness. Cult stardom’s only one evocative soundtrack appearance away.

Sugar Sugar Sugar: This region could use a funny, sexually-charged, larger-than-life rock collective about now, and this Bellingham groove-rock trio looks like they’ve more than got the goods from this corner. Andru Creature’s stuttering David Johanson-gone-horndog vocals, Lupe Flores’ stomping kickdrum, and Justin Verlanic’s gloriously greasy glam guitar are just made for cranking at top volume.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Your Live Music Bets for the Weekend of December 16th through the 18th

Too many great shows in town…Too many great shows in town…

Tonight (Friday, December 16):

Duff McKagan’s Loaded @ Key Arena. $40.00 to $87  at the door. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.

Duff McKagan’s earned serious Seattle musical war-hero stripes over the years, having played drums for punk-pop legends The Fastbacks at age 16, and also manning the skins for local old-school punks The Fartz and playing bass for 10 Minute Warning. He’s probably best known as erstwhile bassist for glam-rock supergroup Velvet Revolver, but The Taking, McKagan’s current release as frontman for his combo Loaded, drags its knuckles along the same gloriously filthy path as Green River and Mudhoney, then filters that noise through an epic big-rock filter (the winningly-ugly “Follow Me to Hell” sounds like Dry as a Bone in Cinemascope). Rumor has it that McKagan has some connection with the night’s headliners, a hard-rock band that achieved a modest measure of success during the tail end of the Reagan Years. Dollars to donuts McKagan’s band will mop the floor with ‘em. 

Thee Emergency, Sugar Sugar Sugar, Last Watch @ The Comet Tavern. $8 at the door. Show at 9pm.

Thee Emergency lead singer Dita Vox possesses more charisma in her well-manicured pinkie than most lesser mortals do in their entire bodies, guitar Matt “Sonic” Smith throws a pinch of glam into his garage soul riffing, and the sturdy rhythm section of Nick Detroit and Tom T. Drummer can pretty much push complacent clubgoers’ asses into motion at a hundred paces. Cracka’ Slang, Thee Emergency’s most recent full-length, trades some of that pulsating energy for dollops of candy-coated psychedelic pop and country, but there’s no way they’ll leave the Comet without busting out some beloved rave-ups like “Can You Dig It?”. They’ll have to: Awesome Bellingham heavy-groovers Sugar Sugar Sugar, who precede them, do the dirty dog with the Stooges and T. Rex somethin’ sweet.

Jay-Z, Kanye West @ The Tacoma Dome. $49.50–$99.50 at the door. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.

My mom, who doesn’t even own a CD player, knows who Jay-Z is, for God’s sake. She likes Annie some, but it never occurred to me to ask her for her take on the Annie-sample-laden “Hard Knock Life”.

 Saturday, December 17:

Scratch Acid, Oxbow@ Neumos. $20 advance. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm.

Art punks vomited up from the bowels of Austin, Texas, Scratch Acid cracked the skulls of Bad Brains and the Dead Kennedys together to create ungodly, ranting, cacophonous noise that remains as corrosive (and mind-blowing) today as it was thirty-some (!) years ago. They’ve (reportedly) still got the goods. And for just five bucks more, you’re nuts not to take in what’s sure to be a lively Q & A between principal Scratch Acid screamer David Yow and local music scribbler extraordinaire Chris Estey (with spoken word by Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson) across the street at the Comet  Tavern two hours prior.

 Dinosaur Jr. and Pierced Arrows, with an interview by Henry Rollins @ The Showbox Market. $22.50 advance, $25 at the door. Show at 7pm.

 Dinosaur Jr. made Neil Young cool amongst punk rock kids, thanks to J. Mascis’s openly Young-infused whine and broiling axwork. To a lot of ears, they never topped Bug, their 1988 opus and the last Dino full-length to feature original bassist Lou Barlow until 2007’s Beyond. Also stopping by: Punk legend/spoken-word gadabout Henry Rollins, who’ll be grilling Mascis, Barlow, and drummer Murph about Bug and lotsa other stuff.

Sunday, December 18:

Holiday Showdown: Portland Cello Project, Israel and Ryan of Blind Pilot, Emily Wells @ Columbia City Theater. $12 advance, $15 at the door. Shows at 7pm and 10:30pm.

The Portland Cello Project augment well-honed perfectionist chops with puckish humor, in an engaging melange of classical, jazz, and popular music (their cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” kills). Things are sure to take a holiday turn, but wherever they journey sonically, it’ll sound sublime in the immaculately-appointed Columbia City Theater. Blind Pilot purvey a brand of acoustic indie-folk that gracefully transcends all of the folkies-come-lately crawling around these parts with clean and lushly romantic pop hooks. “Go On Say It” is one urgent and gorgeous acoustic love song, so here’s hoping that band members Israel and Ryan bust it out in their opening set(s).