In case you haven’t already caught them live or followed them here and here at the SunBreak, Seattle supergroup Walking Papers plays the Crocodile Saturday. Tickets, $10 each plus service fees, are going like the proverbial hotcakes.
Walking Papers generate a wonderfully dark, dense and catchy spell all their own, but they also merit major respect for hand-picking a truly primo pair of opening acts, both wildly divergent from the headliners. Repeat after me: Get there early.
Ballard quartet The Chasers blew the top of my head off at 2012’s West Seattle Summerfest, pounding and pile-driving like some demonic cross between Motorhead, Queens of the Stone Age, and Dick Dale. With a grandly-hair-tossing guitarist and a lead singer who can bellow with charisma to burn, they’ll open things with style.
Following The Chasers will be Atomic Bride, a Seattle outfit who’ve crafted one of this year’s most engaging listens with Dead Air. It’s a full-length that injects The Cramps’ hellacious rockabilly sound with ripsaw punk velocity and snotty vocals that suggest the B-52s with a set of heavy brass ones. Bonus points to the awesome new Chris-Cool-directed video for “DNA,” which features hotrods, Radar Hair and Records, and singer Astra and keyboardist Rachael knife-fighting in spangly skin-tight catsuits.
There’s so much good live music hitting Seattle venues in the next three weeks, it’s scary. That’s as close to a Halloween pun as you’ll get. Carry on.
Tonight (Friday, October 5):
Walking Papers, A Leaf, Dylan Trees @ Barboza. $8 day of show. Show at 7pm.
If you’ve read Clint Brownlee’s exhaustive SunBreak interview with Walking Papers (go here and here, respectively, to catch up), you know that the band’s rock pedigree couldn’t be more solid. Yes, ex-Guns ‘N Roses bassist Duff McKagan and ex-Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin form a rhythm section that grooves as readily as it pummels, but Jeff Angell’s growling vocals and Jimmy Page-flavored guitar licks make for some great frosting on this rock cake. You also know to get there really damned early. Lucky for you, your time waiting for the headliners will be well-served by Tacoma/Seattle quintet A Leaf, whose lush and gorgeous Beatles-cum-Shins pop makes for an incongruous but arresting warm-up.
Kultur Shock, Kinski @ Chop Suey. $12 at the door. Show at 9pm.
Kultur Shock start their sixteenth year as a unit behind a great new EP, Tales of Granpa Guru, Vol. 1. It throws elements of prog-rock conceptual density and dance music into this wonderful punk/metal/gypsy polyglot ‘s potent stew, and as we’ve repeatedly emphasized time and again, they’re an utterly lethal live act. The presence of Seattle avant-rock ensemble Kinski on the bill makes early arrival a necessity: They extract magic, horror, and beauty from a wall of feedback and atmosphere–all without a singer to harsh your head trip.
Piss Drunks, Midnight Idols, Three-Legged Dog @ Slim’s Last Chance Chili Shack and Watering Hole. $12 at the door. Show at 9:00pm.
With a name like Piss Drunks, you know not to expect introspective beardies with mandolins simpering about unrequited love in a forest. Seattle’s hellzapoppin’ hardcore vets (nearly twenty years of active duty) deliver short and to-the-point blasts of punk, and no one in town does it better.
Saturday, October 6:
Seattle Weekly’s Reverb Local Music Festival @ Various Ballard Venues. $5-$15 advance, $15 day of show. Shows begin at 4:30pm.
Nestled between some of this town’s bigger music festivals (late September’s Decibel Fest and the upcoming City Arts Fest, respectively), Reverb can be easy to neglect. But it presents 50 different local bands in 8 Ballard venues, all in one night for one impossibly cheap price. There’s an obscene amount of good stuff at your disposal with your admission, but we’re extra-psyched about the Hilliard’s Brewery line-up (prime horn-fueled vintage funk legislators Soul Senate, space-age hip-hop/ambient wizard OCnotes, and mindfuck drum/synth outfit Brain Fruit, among others); the Tractor Tavern’s alloy of roots (Americana supergroup Cosmic Panther Land Band) and balls-out Seattle rawk (veteran Seattle survivors Sweet Water); and the Sunset’s indie-rock cornucopia capped off by Erik Blood’s sleek shoegazing paeans to porn.
The Psychedelic Furs, The Chevin @ Showbox at the Market. $21.50 advance, $25 day of show. Show at 8pm.
For about three years running in the early 1980s, The Psychedelic Furs were the greatest band of the new wave era. Singer Richard Butler’s magnificant rasp of a voice epitomized wounded romance, and the band’s mixture of scruffy post-punk guitar and sixties melodies led to three incredible records–1980’s eponymous debut, 1981’s Talk Talk Talk, and 1982’s Forever Now. They haven’t recorded a new record since Clinton first took office, but who the hell cares? The band sounded aces at Red Hook Brewery’s 30th Anniversary show last year, and Butler’s sandpaper croon and serpentine cool remain ageless.
Sunday, October 7:
Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps @ The Neptune. $15 advance. Show at 7pm.
Thank you, San Francisco, for unleashing more bat-shit crazy psych-rock/garage rock bands on an unsuspecting world than you can shake a delay pedal at. And thank you especially for Thee Oh Sees, whose shambling and sexy surf-rock-on-heavy-duty-hallucinogens live shows officially make life worth living. Someone make a John Dwyer action figure, stat: I’d buy it.
not an Airplane, Zoe Boekbinder @ Columbia City Theater. $5 day of show. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
not an Airplane (no, that’s not a typo) play solid Americana, largely distinguished by lead singer/songwriter Nick Shattell’s nervy decision to build his band’s latest album, It Could Just Be This Place, out of two fifteen-minute roots operettas (Rolling Stone liked it lots). Zoe Boekbinder, meantime, is a whole ‘nother animal. The Canadian expat possesses a throaty, odd voice that she loops over itself, singing songs that combine folk, cabaret, and electronica in a head-scratching but strangely magical swirl.
[In part two of Clint’s interview with star-studded Seattle band Walking Papers (read part one here), Barrett Martin and company discuss their unconventional approach to their music, the soon-to-be-released Mad Season box set, and their forthcoming live gigs.]
You’ve all been making music for a long time. Does perspective influence you?
Barrett Martin: I’ve played on about 75 albums. I started playing professionally and touring around 1988, so going on 25 years now. You learn a lot from the studio and the road, about your musicianship and, perhaps more importantly, about your personal character. I’ve also taken years off and not toured, so that I could keep learning about music and go back to school for several years. Duff did a similar thing when he went back to college. Over time you realize that making music evolves your spirit in a kind of alchemical process. And when you take the music out on the road, to the people, it completes you as a musician and as a human being. But it all has to be done with clear thought and intention. You have to know what you are doing, and then set out to do it right.
From your site, Barrett: The Walking Papers record conveys “tales of wandering souls, the collisions of will, and the dark beauty of the American heart.”
Barrett: Jeff is a classic storyteller disguised as a skinny rock and roller. He’s certainly lived some of these tales. So have all of us, for that matter. Jeff channels it, and he’s got the ability to tell a great story in one song, or a larger narrative over the course of an album. It’s kind of like a movie, except it’s an album. Or the soundtrack to a movie that hasn’t been made yet.
The record boasts brass, marimbas, and other sounds not typical in straight rock.
Barrett: I’ll take responsibility for that, I’m the one who studied those exotic rhythms and collected those instruments. I feel like rock and roll needs a good injection of other musical influences; it’s a bit stale at the moment. The power of grunge and alternative rock aside, I want to do something very different in this band, because I see rock as a living form (like jazz). It’s alive, and therefore it needs to be cultivated with new sounds, new instruments, and new stories.
Still, this might be your most straightforward rock effort in some time. Is it a release of sorts?
Barrett:Yeah, its something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but I just needed to find the right people. I don’t really like most of what passes for “rock” these days. Corporate radio and the major labels have somewhat destroyed it. I like many other kinds of new music, but rock seems to be pretty limp at the moment. That makes me kind of mad, actually, but I think we’re just currently in a bad cycle. And everything happens in cycles.
Walking Papers in action. (Photo: Stephanie Savoia)
Going back a cycle: At Slim’s, you played “River of Deceit” with Jeff Rouse at the mic. Is there more Mad Season where that came from?
Barrett: Jeff is a great person and he loves that song very much. I like that the Mad Season songs have become everybody’s songs; that’s the way Layne [Staley] and [John] Baker [Saunders] would have wanted it. Nothing is sacred, which means everything is sacred, and anyone, any band can play those songs now.
To honor our departed brothers, Mike and I oversaw a Mad Season box set, which comes out March 12th, 2013. It contains the re-mastered Above album, the Moore concert on DVD with surround sound, and a bunch of live recordings that we never released. The most exciting stuff: three songs that Mark Lanegan wrote lyrics and sang on, songs that we started to record for the second album but never finished because of Baker’s and Layne’s deaths. One of the songs Peter Buck wrote with us, and the other two are from me and Mike. They are three of the heaviest and most beautiful songs Mad Season did, and I know Layne and Baker will love them.
Many big-time groups only cut one record. Is Walking Papers more permanent?
Barrett: We’ve already written the backbone songs for album two and we have studio sessions booked in late December to start the basic tracks. I don’t see the point in only making one album, because as a band, (supergroup withheld) we’re just getting started. [The next record] will probably land somewhere in late spring/early summer of 2013. The stories will continue.
Will there be changes/additions in personnel?
Barrett: There’s always room for special guests. We love the variety of what people bring to the studio or the stage. Mike McCready is a sonic tornado. The horn players from my jazz group are total cats. I’m sure Jeff and Duff have some ideas. I’ve backed up a lot of female singers in the past and I’d like to hear some [of their] vocals mixed in with Jeff’s. The possibilities are limitless, and that’s because we leave it wide open. We don’t paint a box.
Speaking of boxes, why the tiny Barboza for your record release show?
Barrett: Part of it was club availability—there’s only so many clubs in Seattle where you can play rock on a weekend night. But we like the tight, intimate shows. It works well with this band. Better to play to a small, packed room than a cave any day.
Jeff Angell: This amazing band called A Leaf already had the date booked, so we jumped at the opportunity to play with them. Beautiful room, good P.A. In music, numbers should be something a band performs, not an exercise in accounting. But man, now that I think about it, it’ll be kinda sad if people can’t get in. I guess we’ll just have to play another show. Maybe a matinee?
Around 20 years ago, Seattle was home to two true rock supergroups—Temple of the Dog and Mad Season. Though short-lived (by design and by untimely death, respectively), both bands still have fans who will likely dig the city’s newest uber-talented collective, Walking Papers—and not just because of its familiar faces. Turns out when vocalist/guitarist Jeff Angell (Post Stardom Depression, Missionary Position), drummer Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees, Mad Season), keyboardist Benjamin Anderson (Rorschach Test, Missionary Position), and bassist Duff McKagan (Guns N Roses, Loaded) get together, they make really good music. Continue reading Seattle Rock Veterans Present their Walking Papers (Part 1)→
In case you haven’t already caught them live or followed them here and here at the SunBreak, Seattle supergroup Walking Papers plays the Crocodile Saturday. Tickets, $10 each plus service fees, are going like the proverbial hotcakes.
