THURSDAY 3/22
CLUB POP: SHOUT OUT OUT OUT OUT, SELECTOR DUB NARCOTIC, DJ name names, NATALIE PORTMAN’S SHAVED HEAD
(Chop Suey) See preview and Stranger Suggests.
CLIMAX GOLDEN TWINS
(Rendezvous) See The Score.
H.E.A.R. BENEFIT: MUDHONEY, FCS NORTH, PRESS CORPS, GUESTS
(Neumo’s) This is one crazy show: half a dozen bands, including Mudhoney, FCS North, and Junior Jackson… all on the same bill. Plus between-set slots by DJs such as MC Queen Lucky, MASA, and LA Kendall. What madman would book such a show? His name is Kelly Berry, and he’s been an integral figure in Seattle music since “Walk Like an Egyptian” was in the pop charts. Berry is a great drummer and, more importantly, the hardest-working sound engineer around. To celebrate his birthday, he rounded up a host of friends for this very special “mashup” party. Better still, the proceeds go to H.E.A.R., Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers, a charity with obvious appeal to a man who earns his living sticking his head into speaker cabinets. KURT B. REIGHLEY
GOSLING, GLISS, SHOTTY, PATIENT PATIENT
(El Corazón) Back in the late ’90s, four kids from the Tri-Cities calling themselves Loudermilk took Seattle—and then L.A. music-biz types—by storm with their passionately dark rock. The band was signed and dropped by American Recordings and released an album on DreamWorks, only to have the label fold. Undaunted, they re-formed as Gosling, refined their sound, signed to V2, and released a fine, genre-defying album called Here Is…—only to have V2 bite the dust earlier this year. Grab a copy of Here Is… before it’s out of print. Modern rock hasn’t sounded this fresh or energetic in ages: a poppy, glammy, funhouse fusion that is proof that what doesn’t kill you (or make you give up music) might actually make you stronger after all. BARBARA MITCHELL
FRIDAY 3/23
OOIOO, KINSKI’S BUKKAKE CLIMAX
(Chop Suey) See preview.
BLUE SCHOLARS
(Northshore Performing Arts Center) See preview, page 40.
THE CAN’T SEE, THE CAVE SINGERS, WHALEBONES
(Crocodile) The Cave Singers and Whalebones are part of the alt-folk super movement. It’s always been there hiding in the reeds, but it seems to be poking its head out more as of late. Watch, everyone is going to start sounding super alt folky, warm, syncopated, and infused. Warmth is the new grunge. You heard it here first, with washboards and sounds from the foothills. The Cave Singers are Derek Fudesco from Pretty Girls Make Graves, Peter Quirk from Hint Hint, and Marty Lund from Cobra High, and their compositions are subdued yet intense. So get quiet, sway, and pay attention to the lyrics and the movement of their nimble, skilled hands. Stand under a tree and freak out. TRENT MOORMAN
LITTLE PARTY AND THE BAD BUSINESS, THE FLEX, JOEY CASIO
(Kirkland Teen Union Building) Even though you’re approaching 30, you’re still cool, right? You manage to easily survive your hangovers, make it to work on three hours of sleep five nights a week, and you’ve yet to understand why Pete Townshend wanted to die before he got, well, you know. Oh my little mid-20s hipster, go to Kirkland tonight and prepare for disillusionment. Little Party and the Bad Business will make you want to reach for some Geritol and a cane. By the time these kids can have a legal drink, their über-fresh, casio-punk perfection will have made them rock stars. Why? Because they succeed at what music from the underground (or the basement, where they’ve been playing their best shows) is supposed to: making anyone over 25 feel really, really O-L-D. MA’CHELL DUMA LaVASSAR
SATURDAY 3/24
DAVE HOLLAND QUINTET
(Jazz Alley) Jazz Alley lists venerable bassist and composer Dave Holland as “perennial jazz musician of the year,” and while this tagline is in some ways fairly cheeky promotion, it also speaks truthfully to the kind of status Holland has attained with his current work. One of the brilliant and unusual musicians who were let slip into the jazz mainstream via their work in Miles Davis’s most aggressively exploratory groups (alongside John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, et al.), Holland has had an astonishingly uncompromised career. He appears here with his primary touring/recording group, a quintet that has existed, with slight lineup changes, since the late ’90s. With this quintet, Holland has found the perfect vehicle for his highly advanced and personal conception of chamber jazz composition, and the group consists of other composers of equally erudite and sensitive invention. The work this group makes is essentially the most forward-thinking, beautiful ensemble music being created today that anyone would unwaveringly classify as “jazz.” SAM MICKENS See also The Score.
BARCELONA, FAIR, LEAGUE KNIGHT
(Vera Project) Barcelona are a computer-pop group from Washington, D.C., who plug primitive new-wave nostalgia into the back of endearing synth kitsch and covers of Men Without Hats like an ironic A/V art project from fans of the film Short Circuit. Wait! They broke up. Barcelona are a Swedish band then, with, like, a platoon of members, and won the wide-eyed attention of the indie elite last year with superhumanly twee tales about tree houses and stamps, despite being pretty shit. No! That’s I’m from Barcelona. Barcelona, really, I think, are four Seattle guys with hoodies, five o’clock shadows, and a career headed toward perfecting the sound of early-evening, off-network teen dramas where someone’s looking out at the water, wobbling their chin in a sweater. Right? GUY FAWKES
SUNDAY 3/25
ERIC ROBERSON, CHOKLATE
(Triple Door) See Stranger Suggests, page 25.
THE WHIGS, THE GLASSES, FRIDAY MILE
(Chop Suey) The Whigs are a throwback to the heady days before MySpace made friends and blogs made bands; it was that fossil Rolling Stone that declared them “the best unsigned band in America” last year. Of course, after that the Athens, Georgia, trio were quickly signed to ATO Records, label home to My Morning Jacket and Ben Kweller. It’s a good fit: On their debut, Give ‘Em All a Big Fat Lip, the Whigs’ play the kind of rough, rambling garage pop that descends from the Replacements school of alt-rock, attitudinal and pressure cooked and sloppily friendly like a happy drunk. Fans of Kings of Leon and similarly Southern-fried alt-rock should dig in. Fans of perfectly coiffed indie affectation should not. JONATHAN ZWICKEL
TV ON THE RADIO
(Moore) TV on the Radio either released the best album of the year or the second-best album of the year, depending on whose critics’ poll you believe (who knew Bob Dylan was still alive?), but wherever it ranks, Return to Cookie Mountain is a beautiful monster of a record, the defining statement that TVOTR has been circling toward for years but never quite landed up until now. The record’s sublime production and instrumentation provide the perfect backdrop for Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone’s vocal acrobatics and lyrical conjuring. Dense production and lyrical abstractions are also hallmarks of openers Subtle, the Anticon post-rap sextet featuring Doseone, although their imaginative adventures have yet to reach the epic proportions of tonight’s headliners. ERIC GRANDY
THE ABYSSINIANS, REGGAE ANGELS
(Nectar) There’s roots and there’s roots, and the Abyssinians definitely deserve the italics. In 1968, the Jamaican vocal trio recorded “Satta Massagana,” a devotional song of the African diaspora that described “a land far, far away, where there’s no night, there’s only day.” The song became the unofficial anthem of the growing Rastafarian nation, and the Abyssinians were hailed as ambassadors of Rasta culture. Over the ensuing years, the band released several overtly political albums, encouraging spiritual awareness and self-empowerment. They only began playing outside Jamaica in the last few years, and only one original member remains, backed by a pair of veteran vocalists and a full band. I caught a performance a couple years back, and I can attest to the uplifting power they continue to wield. JONATHAN ZWICKEL
MONDAY 3/26
AGAINST ME, RIVERBOAT GAMBLERS, FAKE PROBLEMS
(Hell’s Kitchen) I don’t care that they jumped to a major label (Sire) in 2006, I still love Florida punks Against Me! The J. Robbins—produced album Searching for a Former Clarity is great, even if you gutter punks think the band lost their edge and have since disengaged from the anarchist scene. It’s called growing up, people. In 2005, after that album was released but before the band signed to Sire, I interviewed singer Tom Gable about fans’ expectations. He said, “I feel like people expect you to just have everything fucking figured out, but that’s not the way it is. That’s not the way anybody is. You’re constantly in this battle for the person you are, the person you were, and the person you’re trying to become. It’s a weird thing, and that’s growing up, that’s living life.” Amen. MEGAN SELING
TUESDAY 3/27
RATATAT, 120 DAYS
(Neumo’s) See Stranger Suggests, page 25.
SON VOLT, MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO., NORTH TWIN
(Showbox) With his one-time running buddy Jeff Tweedy as predictable as an April Mariners’ swoon, Son Volt’s Jay Farrar continues to experiment with and reinvent his prolific contribution to recorded American music, and tonight he makes his annual stop in Seattle to prove it. On the three-week-old The Search, Farrar packs away the Gibsons and Fenders that blistered 2005’s Okemah and the Melody of Riot, deferring to guitar loops, keyboards, and Stax-style horns to back his politically charged observations and on-the-road imagery. Far from banal onstage, the reticent leader—who has completely revamped the lineup from Son Volt’s first three albums—often follows his most introspective works (“Windfall,” “Back into Your World”) with a ’60s garage cover or an original rocker just as suitable for Crazy Horse. The two-month tour begins Monday, March 26, in Bellingham. SCOTT HOLTER
WEDNESDAY 3/28
YOU AM I, STEVE TURNER, YOUNG SPORTSMEN
(Crocodile) It’s astonishing You Am I even bother to travel halfway around the world to play our lame-ass country anymore. In their native Australia, these guys are bona fide gods, selling out huge venues and racking up number-one albums for a decade now. And if you have ever been fortunate enough to catch them live, you know why: They rank among the most energetic bands in the universe, serving up generous lashings of R-O-C-K seasoned with the pop hooks and lyrical savvy of handsome-devil-cum-bandleader Tim Rogers. Maybe they just make their periodic treks to our hemisphere to revisit their club roots and stay humble. The crowd, be it 20 or 20,000 strong, usually goes apeshit, so even the most intimate You Am I gig is far from a bringdown. KURT B. REIGHLEY