Music

Up & Coming

This Week's Noteworthy Shows and Parties

by Stranger Staff

Jade Harris

BLITZEN TRAPPER

Thursday 7/30

Abe Vigoda, Talbot Tagora, Eric Ostrowski, Telepathic Liberation Army

(Vera) I first became aware of Abe Vigoda—the band, not the actor, whom I adored for his contributions to The Godfather (Tessio, how could you?)—when a band I like was derided as nothing but an Abe Vigoda knockoff. That band was Baltimore's Ponytail, whom I like enough to make proceeding directly to Abe Vigoda a no-brainer. Skeleton soon made me a fan. A spazzy Ponytail-ish racket is indeed present, but so is something Ponytail never come near: lyrics, which are laced throughout the melodic, mathy clamor, with virtually every track sounding like three great songs having a harmonious fight. DAVID SCHMADER See also preview.

Quintron & Miss Pussycat, Ononos, the Tempers

(Chop Suey) Quintron & Miss Pussycat's latest album, Too Thirsty 4 Love, supplied more of the act's usual organ-driven, absurdist, dance-floor black magic, but it did so with slightly less ear-sticking insistence than their previous, Swamp Tech. Still, Q&P just cruising on autopilot would still make for a wilder ride than most nightclub entertainers provide. Live, Quintron is an unparalleled operator, all four limbs engaged, hands busy on multiple keyboards (fronted by the menacing grill and headlights of a wide, old automobile), feet tapping on a hi-hat and other pedals, all the while howling fire on the microphone. Miss Pussycat provides vocal counterpoint, maracas, and puppet shows. Openers Ononos—conceived not so much as a Yoko Ono tribute act as a missionary sect of Plastic Ono Band—have really hit their stride in the past year, transforming from an endearingly messy audiovisual terrorist cell to a frighteningly effective and military-precise one, ably deploying the weapons of new wave, new age, and dadaist performance art. ERIC GRANDY

RZA, Stone Mecca, Boy Jones, 33 1/3

(Neumos) We all know that RZA is the greatest beat producer in the history of hiphop. We all know that his beats can stand alone without a rapper (this is not true for DJ Premier, the next greatest producer in this history). We all know that RZA cannot rap for shit. We all know that he wished he had produced Fabolous/Just Blaze's "Breathe." We all wonder why RZA did not release Ghost Dog as a soundtrack. We all know that if he had done so, it would have been the greatest soundtrack since Blade Runner. We all know RZA likes chess. We all know RZA is a geek. CHARLES MUDEDE

Police Teeth, Mount Vicious, Steel Tigers of Death

(Funhouse) When Police Teeth played Vera a few weeks back, the band—with songs like "Motherfuckers Move Slow" and "Who Wants to Fuck a Millionaire"—raged on with complete disregard for the two little kids dancing front and center. The parents in attendance didn't seem to mind—they really enjoyed it, in fact—and the kids were oblivious to the fact that the band were singing about getting high and drunk, and cursing enough during between-song banter to make a sailor blush. The kids just happily, cluelessly bounced around to the catchy melodies. If that's how they behave in front of 4-year-olds, imagine what they'll do tonight, at the Funhouse, in front of a bunch of drunken old dudes. MEGAN SELING

Bowerbirds, Megafaun

(Triple Door) Those with a lusty appetite for North Carolina–based compact-sized indie bands are in luck tonight. Headliners Bowerbirds write earnest, orchestral folk-rock songs steeped in nature imagery. Their songs are delicately woven with exquisite care (with accordion and violin often to the fore), but they induce a drowsiness despite all that acute attention to detail and obviously careful craft. Megafaun come across as earthier than their tourmates, with darker, Deliverance-tinted hues in their music (they also sport more impressive beards than Bowerbirds, which I know is important to many of you). Whereas Bowerbirds' sound is dry, Megafaun's is loamy and sometimes pregnant with incipient danger beneath its shaggy exterior. This plus the fact that Megafaun's members have worked with awesome minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt makes them the odds-on favorite to steal the show tonight. DAVE SEGAL

Friday 7/31

Blitzen Trapper, Throw Me the Statue

(Mural Amphitheatre, Seattle Center) See preview and Stranger Suggests.

Red Bull Big Tune: Battle Cat, DJ Quik

(War Room) See My Philosophy.

Derrick Carter, Dave Pezzner

(Neumos) What Derrick Carter doesn't know about house music probably isn't worth knowing. The Chicago jock is the proverbial walking encyclopedia of the genre that his native city birthed in the Reagan era, a dance-music style that defiantly arose out of the flames of the Chicago White Sox's anti-disco record-burning fiasco. Besides delving into house classics past and present, Carter's sets invariably touch on disco, soul, jazz, and electro pop, revealing house's sometimes unlikely roots—or because some tunes are simply too infectious not to slip into a mix. Local Dave Pezzner has been receiving copious praise in these pages lately for his adventurous takes on techno and house, and we're guessing he's going to bust out his most lethal weapons of mass seduction while opening for this legend. DAVE SEGAL

Uberzone vs. Bassbin Twins

(Last Supper Club) Remember when Uberzone was set to become the next big U.S. electronica act after (the much inferior) Crystal Method? Yeah, that never really happened for the California gadget genius. But for a minute his eccentrically spacey electro-funk compositions bore some of the most bizarre textures among the American breakbeat pack; they even impressed Afrika Bambaataa enough to broker a collaboration with him. Uberzone's still plugging away, now paired with another name I haven't heard dropped since the '90s, Bassbin Twins. The latter released some of the most exciting funk of that decade, winning over the discerning minds at the once-crucial Skint Records. Huh, maybe this bill signals that we're finally ready for the Big Beat revival. DAVE SEGAL

Toots and the Maytals, Public Property, DJ Kid Hops

(Showbox at the Market) With this old but vital Jamaican band, Toots and the Maytals, we can see the bridge from ska to reggae. We also can see another great bridge that, midway, splits into two: the bridge that connects American soul music with ska and with reggae. But what is the music of the Maytals about? It is about the essence of things and experiences. The music does not distort a thing or an experience, but gets to its essence. In "Got to Be There," we get to the core of a church congregation, a church service. Where have you got to be? You've got to be there in church. With "Time Tough," we get to the core of postcolonial economic oppression—neoliberalism ("everything is getting higher and higher"). With "Country Roads," we get to the essence of the land itself: the country, its soil, its trees, its physical presence. The distance between the world and the music of Toots and the Maytals is very small. CHARLES MUDEDE

Saturday 8/1

Warlocks, the Morning After Girls, Gliss

(Chop Suey) The Warlocks deal in the same trade as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Brian Jonestown Massacre, et al.—droning, reverb-and-distortion-soaked guitar lines, disillusioned vocals, and faraway percussion. Call it space rock or shoegaze or whatever—though it's well-trod territory, I'm still a sucker for it. That said, while Los Angeles's Warlocks have made some decent records to date, their latest, The Mirror Explodes, is middling. The exception here is "Frequency Meltdown," which builds for two and a half minutes with a taut snare cadence underneath triumphant, ethereal guitar riffs and insistent bass plodding. The crescendo finds them sounding like a more static version Mogwai or Explosions in the Sky, and when it breaks, it briefly exposes the band's potential. GRANT BRISSEY

The Saturday Knights, Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme, DJ Electro Wolf

(EMP) For a moment there, it looked like the Saturday Knights were going to be the bona fide Next Big Thing (or, if you prefer, Wave) in Seattle hiphop—skillful as they are playful, rock-friendly as they are rap-credible, the group seemed poised to wholly dominate 2008. That they didn't quite, that they've been just one great Seattle hiphop success story among many in the past year, is more a credit to the overwhelming amount of talent in this town right now than it is a slight to the Knights. TSK can still rock a party with the best of them, with MCs Tilson and Barfly spitting, respectively, amiable but alpha-wolfing game and drunken mastery while DJ Suspence cuts beats and spikes mics behind them, often bolstered by an extra hand on guitar or drums. Any chance to get some actual live music shaking the staid (if abstract) halls of the EMP is a good thing, and the Saturday Knights are the perfect band to do it while Jim Henson's Muppets are on display (check their Sesame Street cred on the video for "Count It Off"). ERIC GRANDY

Elba, Another Perfect Crime, Skeletons with Flesh on Them, the Animals at Night

(High Dive) Elba's got a kind of nervous energy that makes you want to dance, or at least pogo in place, when you first hear them. Even their chill-out songs, like "At Your Feet," with its relatively calm trumpet laid over the dithering guitar lines, feels frantic, like the band members have had way too many super-large gas-station coffees in way too short a time. Ordinarily this isn't the kind of feeling I'd enjoy in a band, but their jangly-nerve assault works because Elba don't seem to be working the audience up to a destructive lather; the journey to excitability is its own reward. Hyperactivity has never felt so cool. PAUL CONSTANT

Sunday 8/2

The Henry Clay People, Final Spins

(Crocodile) Glendale, California's the Henry Clay People create that effusive brand of indie rock that invariably raises the corners of your mouth and maybe inspires a sky punch or three. The same principle that applies to the music of the Hold Steady (and Bruce Springsteen) animates the Henry Clay People: catchy melodies conceived to uplift (but not too crazily high) through a sense of blue-collar camaraderie. It's also as American as your mom hitting an apple pie with a baseball bat. Final Spins' music is marked by a remarkably light gravity, a casual lugubriousness (thanks mainly to Joe Syverson's warm, Mark Eitzel–esque vocals) that consoles rather than depresses. Their debut album, This Is Then/That Was Now, feels as if it were created in a low-ceilinged basement with stringent limitations placed on volume levels, so Final Spins had to make the best of a lousy situation. It benefits greatly from these restrictions (even if they're imaginary). Final Spins consist of members/ex-members of Throw Me the Statue, Pica Beats, J. Tillman's solo unit, Band of Horses, and Siberian. You'll be hearing more from them. DAVE SEGAL

Black Francis

(Triple Door) In 2007, after the release of his solo "best of" Frank Black 93–03, Charles Thompson, now a proud Portland resident, reclaimed his original Pixies sobriquet of Black Francis. While hardcore fans of that band (such as myself) might be anticipating a mere appetizer to their performance of Doolittle in the fall, Thompson has a helluva catalog all his own at nearly 20 albums, including a heap of great material and at least one masterpiece, Teenager of the Year (a glorious house-fire of an album that still merits weekly listens). Black Francis can still "scream it like [he] hate[s] that bitch" when he needs to, but his solo output in recent years has tended toward gorgeously spare, wryly all-American rock, with his awesomely tender/twisted songwriting spiked with the usual sci-fi ephemera, historical references, and biblical allusions. LARRY MIZELL JR.

Idle Times, Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat Dan Singa, Snake Flower 2, Night Beats

(Comet) Idle Times create pleasantly ramshackle, slightly psychedelic garage rock. Like all the best stuff of this ilk, it's guttural and sounds like it was recorded from the next room in a dimly lit basement. Dave Segal recently called their sound "common as PBR," but noted that "a lot of people like PBR, so they should be golden." While I'm not totally on board with this summation, I will say that this type of rock is best consumed after several PBRs (or any brand, really), from right up in the front row, and without earplugs. Also, the vaguely T. Rex–esque "Whatever Works" is a jam. GRANT BRISSEY

John Doe & the Sadies, Jill Sobule

(Tractor) Punk-rock grandpa John Doe has mellowed into a long, country twilight. It suits him. He's always kept some rhythm-and-twang in his back pocket (X, the Knitters) and has the all-American hangdog look. Doe and Canadian country veterans the Sadies are touring behind their new record of covers—Roger Miller, Waylon Jennings, Tammy Wynette—and a few originals. Doe can't do anything straight. Just as his punk was a little bit country, his country is a little faster and a little rougher than everybody else's, with a penumbra of '60s psychedelia glowing around the edges. As always, Doe's voice is as broad and blunt and smooth as a worn-out leather glove. It fits around the tunes beautifully, even when we know he doesn't always buy the lyrics. (Like these nostalgia-for-squaresville lines from Merle Haggard: "I wish coke were still Cola and joint was a bad place to be/Back before Nixon lied to us all on TV.") Jill Sobule is most famous for "I Kissed a Girl," a 1995 bi ballad about love between housewives in the heartland. BRENDAN KILEY

Monday 8/3

The Rumble: The Blakes, U.S.E, Battle Hymns

(Crocodile) Tonight's the inaugural local edition of The Rumble, a series of parties that goes down in NYC, L.A., San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, and now Seattle. The all-local lineup features the Blakes' gritty, tuneful, Anglophile rock, which goes down easy, if with few surprising flavors; Battle Hymns' stark, deadpan-voiced folk-rock songs in the vein of Smog and Silver Jews; and United State of Electronica's irrepressibly uplifting dance pop. U.S.E have a long-awaited sophomore album coming out on their own label in October titled Loveworld. It's a joyous reiteration of all the qualities that many thousands worldwide have fallen smiling head over kicking heels for. U.S.E are the feel-good band of the decade, hands down (I mean, up). DAVE SEGAL

The Curb Side Avengers, No One and the Somebodies, Turbosleaze, Amtraque Fingerbang

(Funhouse) Local duo the Curb Side Avengers' lo-fi garage punk sounds like it's stuck in a perpetual 1977 of the mind: all agitated, congested-nasal-passages vocals; dawn-of-rock, cardboard-box beats; and badly tuned, cheap-guitar snarl. This music is rude and rudimentary, but not without a scruffy charm. Amtraque Fingerbang also keep the fidelity supremely low, but slow the pace and privilege melody a bit more than the CSA. Sparsely pretty, Amtraque Fingerbang's subliminal rock songs are suffused in an alluring twilight that lends them an air of mystique, even if it's obviously the product of flat-broke bohos. Intriguing stuff, nonetheless. DAVE SEGAL

Tuesday 8/4

Gladiators Eat Fire, Doomfock, Red Obelisk, Into the Storm

(Funhouse) Gladiators Eat Fire cite Muse, the Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower, and Deftones as influences, and after listening to their album, Keep the Beat Alive, I move to add Refused and Idiot Pilot to that list (I can do that, right? As an official "music critic" or whatever?). It's a clusterfuck, really. Gladiators Eat Fire have that whole "loud as hell" thing for which Muse are known, and they're just as frenzied as anything Plot have ever done, with intense guitar breakdowns building back up to explosive climaxes (e.g., "Felix the Boy Who Cried Fenix"). Live, it'll be either an ear-blistering hot mess or a fantastically successful sum of all its parts. There will be no middle ground. MEGAN SELING

Stellastarr*, Wild Light, Mason Proper

(Chop Suey) The '80s revival that has been promised since 1991 has come in dribs and drabs ever since; bands that take it too literally, with the skinny ties and synthesizers, still look like morons. And stellastarr* have managed to—I can't believe I'm writing this—find what was right about the '80s and transform it into something worthwhile. They pepper their songs with enough "Oh! Oh! Oh!" choruses to bring the Cars to mind, but there's also a wonky, Pixies-style tunefulness, and enough ragged edge on the smooth pop stylings, to make them sound new at the same time. PAUL CONSTANT

Wednesday 8/5

Kimya Dawson, Paleface, No One and the Somebodies, Turbosleaze

(Vera) See Stranger Suggests.

Pulse Emitter, Grasslung, Brother Raven, Algiers, Prisonfood

(Josephine) See Data Breaker.

Sunn O))) duo, the Accüsed, Trap Them, Black Breath

(Neumos) Haven't yet experienced the aural smothering of Sunn O))) live? Tonight is a prime opportunity for the uninitiated. While the drone-doom ensemble's last Seattle performance in late 2007 seemed more focused on tension-building abstractions than planetary-sized riffs, tonight's performance promises a return to their unadulterated bulldozer of a debut, The GrimmRobe Demos. While there is much to be said for the broader dynamic range of Sunn O)))'s recent collaborative work, one cannot denounce the stripped-down low-end thunder of their early years. Prepare for gargantuan guitars, glacial paces, and panic-inducing volume, all unimpeded by the higher and brighter frequencies of drums, vocals, and other distractions. And the supporting cast of bands? Unfuckwithable. BRIAN COOK See also Stranger Suggests.

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