THURSDAY 4/26
TALL BIRDS, GREG ASHLEY’S MEDICINE FUCK DREAM, UNNATURAL HELPERS
(Sunset) See preview.
CLUB POP: THE BLAKES, YACHT, DJS PACO AND COLBY B
(Chop Suey) A fitting engagement for the euphoria-pursuant youngster dance night Club Pop, Portland’s YACHT deals in music of utter, single-minded positivity. The solo work of electronic musician and generally effusive friendmaker Jona Bechtolt (primary musical architect of the Blow), YACHT spins willfully mantra-like, primary-colored pop songs over a shimmery, post-Neptunes musical landscape. Their brand-new record, I Believe in You. Your Magic Is Real, finds Bechtolt wholeheartedly complete in his transition from laptop polymath to art popster, and his live performances are accordingly energized in the pursuit of group-mind good times. SAM MICKENS See also album review.
SEXVID, WEIRDLORDS, OS COYOTES
(Comet) SexVid seem to only play rare basement shows. Their following is hard and cult. Now two shows, two clubs, one night? Out of character for the hardcore mystics. On the other side of their practice-space wall, SexVid initially sound like a cat in a piranha pond. However, once their destructive noise settles into your ear, you realize they’re tight as shit. It’s like they’re driving a tank through an obstacle course for compact cars. Somehow they don’t knock over a single cone and their parallel parking is spot on. But once SexVid receive their perfect driving-test score, they take another turn and run over all the other cars, smooshing them like indie-rock pancakes. TRENT MOORMAN
THE BOOKS
(Neumo’s) The Books’ found-sound collages have never sounded more melodic or fully realized than on their most recent record, Lost and Safe. The duo of American Nick Zammuto (bass and guitar) and Dutchman Paul De Jong (cello) has always combined acoustic compositions with processed vocal samples and aleatoric elements to create surprising and sublime sonic happenings. But on Lost and Safe, the Books give their songs more recognizable structure, and Zammuto adds his own original vocals to the mix. The result is an album that retains their random quirks while humanizing the whole abstract process. Their live shows mix live instrumentation, prerecorded audio, and synchronized visuals to add a little synesthesia to their scenes. ERIC GRANDY
FRIDAY 4/27
THE BLOOD BROTHERS, CELEBRATION, TRIUMPH OF LETHARGY SKINNED ALIVE TO DEATH
(Showbox) See Stranger Suggests.
THE LASHES, THE CATCH, SURPRISE GUESTS
(Comet) That’s right, it says “Surprise Guests.” And because I promised I wouldn’t blab the secret all over town, I’m not going to tell you who it is. But I can tell you, if you’re already going to the show to see the Lashes and the Catch, chances are you like to dance, so U will no doubt be Surprised and Excited when whoever it is hits the stage. MEGAN SELING
SHIFT: ZACHARIA, RICHIE SPOONZ, DIRTY, PRESS
(ToST, late) If dubstep is to grime as triphop was to jungle, i.e., a curtains-drawn answer to the propulsive new idea of English inner-city life, no one seems to have told the people at Shift. Last month’s launch of Seattle’s first dubstep monthly was different—instead of pockets of concentrated stand-at-the-back cool, there was a heave to the crowd, with DJs offering slabs of accelerated and anxious dubstep to people in funny hats, a man dancing like an android near the toilets, and someone so excited about his index finger being in the air that he leapt up and down, fell over, and tore off the sound system’s power. Now there’s a slew of new names and the kickoff jitters are gone. And they’re bringing in more subwoofers. Cripes. GUY FAWKES
KONONO NO. 1
(Triple Door) Konono No. 1—from Congo and Angola—might be the most punk septuagenarian-fronted, traditional-thumb-piano ensemble ever to come out of Africa. Stymied by the overpowering noise of the city, they wired their acoustic likembé with electricity and built amplification systems out of old car parts and public-address systems. Their sound, as its origins would suggest, is a happy collision of the antiquated and the modern. Their traditional tribal rhythms take on noisy, electronic qualities in the amplification process, sounding something like hypnotic, lo-fi techno. Konono No.1 do for thumb pianos what Lightning Bolt does for bass guitar, combining the unique sound with singers, dancers, and multiple percussionists. The group recently collaborated with Björk on her new record. In Kinshasa, their shows can apparently last up to five or six hours, but tonight’s show will probably overwhelm more with sheer sonics than with duration. ERIC GRANDY See also The Score.
SATURDAY 4/28
SLOAN
(Neumo’s) With 30 (yes, you read that right) tracks on their new album, Never Hear the End of It, Sloan could have written their own punch line—if they hadn’t written great songs instead. Fortunately, the title could refer to the fact that once you hear classic gems like “Who Taught You to Live Like That?” “Ana Lucia,” and “Listen to the Radio,” you’ll never get them out of your head. While Sloan’s albums are solid, the band truly shines live. With four singers/multi-instrumentalists and an arsenal of effortless, harmony-laden anthems (not to mention an easy confidence and camaraderie that comes from playing together for a decade a half), the band had jaded industry types and hipsters alike eating out of their hands at SXSW. Get there early for the fantastic pop of the 88. BARBARA MITCHELL
ADULT., ERASE ERRATA, PARTS & LABOR, DJ PORQ
(Chop Suey) “They always seemed like very nice people.” Until the neighbors caught wind of their fourth album, that is. Heaven only knows what nice Detroit folks who live near Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus—aka Adult.—would make of Why Bother?, which takes the discomfort and paranoia of the married couple’s earlier albums to delirious extremes. Hemmed in by piercing synthesizers and rickety-tick drum machines, Kuperus hiccups, howls, and shrieks her displeasure with pack mentality as if her very survival hung in the balance. While some electro-rock acts take solace in acting like machines, and others attempt to humanize their sound with warts-and-all vocals, Adult. zigzag violently between the two poles. Ozzie and Harriet they ain’t, but watching them flail through their suburban nightmare is damned entertaining. KURT B. REIGHLEY See also album review and Stranger Suggests.
REGGIE WATTS, HARD ‘N PHIRM
(Triple Door) With all these wise-ass comedians playing to indie-rock audiences, it was only a matter of time before the tables were turned and an indie rocker jumped into comedy. Seattle’s own Reggie Watts is the guy, and Scrotor is his tiny, nutsack-tugging robot friend. (Actually, the Scrotor bit is from his last trip to the Triple Door; this latest one is themed “Sex and Destruction.”) Formerly the Afro-sporting frontman of funk rockers Maktub, Watts has a deadpan delivery and far-out wit, but his best asset as a comedian is that often he doesn’t really tell jokes—he’ll simply beatbox himself into an improbably hilarious vocal routine where the sounds he layers on top of each other add up to their own punch lines. Amazingly, sarcasm hardly enters the picture, a true virtue for any indie rocker. JONATHAN ZWICKEL
SUNDAY 4/29
Z’EV, MOE! STAIANO, SIKHARA, NOAH MICKENS
(Vera Project) See The Score.
MEMPHIS, THE POSTMARKS
(Chop Suey) Spending 18 months of my adult life in South Florida wasn’t part of my music-seeking agenda, and not surprisingly it yielded few surprises. The most valuable of those was the discovery of a thriving, if microscopic, indie-rock scene in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. Along with a paltry few other bands, the Postmarks arose out of that cultural backwater and are the ones currently poised for greatest national exposure. The brains behind the band is studio wizard Chris Moll and the brawn comes from drummer John Wilkins. But the face and the voice of the Postmarks belongs to Tim Yehezkely, a beautiful young chanteuse that gives the band’s sunny baroque pop a buoyant, girlish sensuality. It’s a charming, sophisticated sound and the last thing you’d expect from South Florida. JONATHAN ZWICKEL
MONDAY 4/30
JARVIS COCKER
(Showbox) See preview.
YOUNG BUCK, BLOCK TEAMSTERS, UNION, GAMEBOY, DJ TOPSPIN
(Chop Suey) A tremendous push has been made with the release of Young Buck’s new record, Buck the World, to define Buck as the “cleanup man” of his crew, the artist who will reenergize and return to glory the presently flagging status of his team. Since Buck’s crew is the permanently artistically ebbing G-Unit, however, being its hypothetical savior is sort of like leading an army of paraplegics. Although the new album’s lead single, “Get Buck,” warpaths on a satisfying Timbaland-produced, brass-laden death march, it also suffers from a traffic jam of contemporary rap clichés (it’s far from invigorating or revelatory to hear a dude drop proclamations like “I’m a boss” and “I can make it rain” if there’s nothing fresh in his context or delivery). That said, for those so inclined, it could be amazing to experience the bombastic ridiculousness of Buck’s swagger in the comparatively tiny confines of Chop Suey. SAM MICKENS
TUESDAY 5/1
BRIGHT EYES
(Paramount) See album review.
TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN L.A.
(Rendezvous) See The Score.
FROG EYES, ALEX DELIVERY, FERAL CHILDREN
(Crocodile) The churning, swirling melodies of Frog Eyes mirror the constellation of connections that radiate out from the band like the Milky Way. Singer/guitarist Carey Mercer has called his previous band, the adventurous and eclectic Blue Pine, which also boasted current bassist Michael Rak, “the embryo for Frog Eyes”; Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade plays some delightfully quirky keyboards; and the band has played live with Dan Bejar’s Destroyer, which led to the formation of the Canadian supergroup (no, the term is not an oxymoron) Swan Lake. All this is just to say that there’s a pedigree here. Now forget all that and listen to the complicated, yearning, sometimes-discordant paeans to the world and all its strangeness. I almost forgot—their live show is a thing of terrible beauty and chaos. CHRIS McCANN
WEDNESDAY 5/2
JOEY DEFRANCESCO
(Triple Door) See The Score.
DEBORAH VOIGT
(Benaroya Hall) See The Score.
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM
(Showbox) James Murphy is a kind of postmodern James Brown (R.I.P.), a hardest-working man in show business for the postmillennial generation. Murphy’s a label head, a constant producer/remixer, a DJ, and the leader of LCD Soundsystem, a one-man studio project that explodes into an air-tight live band for tours. Like the departed godfather, the LCD frontman is a near-dictatorial auteur who perfects every moment and sound and demands precise heat from his band. Postmodern because Murphy’s whole persona is built on a certain self-effacement and demystification of the rock star and the music nerd—he insists he’s really just a “fat guy in a T-shirt doing all the singing.” Live, Murphy is possibly the world’s most charismatic T-shirted fat guy (and he’s been working out recently), and his band’s onslaught of taut funk and electro-disco jams is undeniable. ERIC GRANDY