This month, local mega-indie label Sub Pop is celebrating its
20th birthday. Really it’s a bit like Lincoln’s birthday—or
Jesus’s. The date is fudged, estimated, maybe arbitrarily made up. By
some accounts, Sub Pop goes back to 1979 in the form of a fanzine
published by label cofounder Bruce Pavitt. The Sub Pop 100 compilation came out in 1986. So Sub Pop has been hanging on the old
flippity-flop for a TAD longer than 20 years. Still, congrats, and
happy birthday, observed.
The night of April 1, Chop Suey hosted Sub Pop band the Ruby Suns as
well as Le Loup and the Pica Beats, both signed to Sub Pop spin-off
Hardly Art. Sub Pop honcho Jonathan Poneman was there, as were numerous
label employees, as well as a roomful of regular showgoers.
The Ruby Suns played an enjoyably loose and divergent set.
Band leader Scott McPhun sang, played guitar, and occasionally
triggered samples or drummed on some percussion set up at the front of
the stage. Bandmates Amee Robinson and Imogen Taylor played bass and
keys, respectively, Taylor sometimes picking up a flute, Robinson
sometimes switching to guitar. Live, their songs were more rickety and
kinetic than on record, with McPhun especially jumping around and
flailing at the drums. But some moments were perfectly executed, like
the big wall of sound and reverberating hand claps during one
Spectorish girl-group number.
The band introduced “There Are Birds” by griping about the review I
gave Sea Lion in The Stranger because it singled
this song out as particularly good. If you’re going to complain about
your band’s reviews from onstage, be funny about it, or at least clever
enough to recognize when you’re complaining about a positive review. At least they’re reading. In any case, “There Are Birds”
remains the catchiest song on the album.
Le Loup were quite a presence onstage: a seven-person-strong
ensemble with three guitars, bass, drums, multiple singers, alternating
banjos, keys, and French horn. Their songs, from debut album The
Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General
Assembly, sounded even more frantically cataclysmic and rapturously
calm than on record, the band playing with chaotic energy but careful
precision.
The Sub Pop revelry continued the next night at Hattie’s Hat in
Ballard, but for those, like me, who were unable to attend, the real
party is going to happen this summer, with two days and nights of Sub
Pop bands—including a reunited Green River—performing July
12 and 13 at that legendary hotbed of grunge, Marymoor Park in Redmond.
Bring the kids! 