THURSDAY 8/9
THE THIEVES OF KAILUA (Album Release), VELELLA VELELLA, THE
LOVE LIGHTS
(Chop Suey) See Album Reviews, page 61.
THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES, SOUND TEAM, THE
CLUTTERS
(Neumo’s) These Arms Are Snakes are a sonic catastrophe, a seizure of
sounds created to do two things: crush your eardrums and move your ass.
They’re a sensation to witness live—the amount of energy expelled
from the stage via a light show, blasting instruments, and passionate
playing is a wonder to behold. Get up front, get sweaty and thrash, or
stand in the back and take it all in—either way you’ll get a
show. What’s going to make These Arms even more cathartic, though, is
the fact that Sound Team are opening—an Austin band who’re also a
mishmash of sparkling guitars, big, bright drumming, and vocals with an
indie-rock tinge of Austin-inspired attitude (a little bit country, a
little bit rock and roll). Compared to These Arms, Sound Team are a
stroll in the park, but their intensity isn’t MIA; it’s very much
there. They’re just bringing it with more beauty and less brashness.
MEGAN SELING
MIRAH AND SPECTRATONE INTERNATIONAL PRESENT SHARE THIS
PLACE
(Triple Door) Originally commissioned in part by the Seattle
International Children’s Festival (where it debuted this past May),
Share This Place is the collaborative work of K Records
songstress Mirah and local petite orchestra Spectratone International.
Formed by Black Cat Orchestra founders Lori Goldston and Kyle Hanson,
Spectratone are much more pared down than the large, shifting roster of
their predecessor, but their music is similarly genre omnivorous and
dramatically charged. They have been serving as Mirah’s band, both live
and on select recordings, for years now, and Share This Place may be their most fully integrated collaboration yet. Drawing their
inspiration from art-entomologists past, like Jean-Henri Fabre and
Karel Capek, Share This Place is a meticulously researched and
constructed song cycle dealing tenderly with the true lives of insects.
SAM MICKENS
FRIDAY 8/10
LION OF JUDAH, VANGUARD, LIVING IN RUINS, NEVER LOOKING
BACK, HOUSES
(Viaduct Venue, Tacoma) See Underage, page 75.
NAZCA LINES, OPEN CHOIR FIRE
(Easy Street After Hours, West Seattle) Months ago I claimed that Nazca
Lines reminded me of One for the Ride—era Waxwing,
boasting the same moody guitar work and on-point drumming. But I take
it back. It may have been true for their early material (honestly, I
can’t remember), but their debut record, Cremation/Cruises (being celebrated via this album-release show), is currently blowing my
mind in a whole new way: pissed off vocals with boiling, postrock
instrumentation, bursts of mid-’90s East Coast aggression, and songs
that climax with blasting hooks. The anthemic “4-Star Plagiarism”
deserves to be played in front of a rowdy crowd of kids clapping and
yelling along, so come to the show prepared. MEGAN SELING
DEVIN THE DUDE, DYME DEF, D. BLACK, I-GANG, THE PARKER
BROTHAZ
(Showbox) Devin the Dude likes us here in Seattle. We, in turn, like
him. We get each other: Whenever he emerges onstage, red-eyed from the
region’s finest, and starts in on any of his odes to drank, dank, and
makin’ love, he knows an appreciative audience will rap and croon along
with each fonky verse and sticky chorus. He may not get the worldwide
recognition he deserves for being one of Houston’s greatest gifts, but
we are always one of the towns that gives the Dude his propers. As he
once told me, “If y’all feel like I’m up here, then
shit, that’s exactly where I am.” P.S.: Showbox security man, don’t
blow my high. LARRY MIZELL JR. See also My Philosophy, page
69.
SATURDAY 8/11
FUCKING ABOUT SONGS: BIG BLACK COVER NIGHT W/THE LUNA MOTH, THE KEEPER, I’M A GUN, AND MORE
(Jules Maes) First of all, “Fucking About Songs” is a fantastic name
for a Big Black cover night. Second of all, damn. Big Black. Steve
Albini. “Kerosene.” How do you even attempt to cover the works of such
lauded punk icons? Well, the how will remain a mystery until the night
of this show, but the “what” we know: Big Black played their final show
in Seattle on August 11, 1987, at the Georgetown Steam Plant. Twenty
years to the day, a handful of Seattle bands will gather to pay
tribute. Among them: Erin Jorgensen, Seattle’s premier (only?)
punk-rock marimba player, who will cover “Dead Billy” and “Bad Houses”;
acerbic slowcore singer/songwriter Levi Fuller, who’ll cover “Pavement
Saw” solo and “Fists of Love” and “Things to Do Today” with his band
the Luna Moth; and Little Brown (as in neither Big nor Black), a local
punk “supergroup” formed for just this occasion and featuring members
of the Cripples and the Gloryholes, who will play “Racer X” and “Fish
Fry.” ERIC GRANDY
PATTI SMITH
(Showbox) So I got to interview Patti Smith, and I asked why she covers
the Doors on her latest album, Twelve. She said, “I had this
dream that I was walking through this arcade, like in Twin
Peaks or something, and I heard this voice: ‘You have to do “Soul
Kitchen.”‘ Then I saw this weird angel guy behind the curtain, and he’s
going, ‘You have to do “Soul Kitchen.”‘ I woke up and I was like,
‘Weird. Well, I’m not going to.’ I got dressed to go to my cafe, I go
out on the street, and then this big truck comes—it was either a
sanitation truck or a snowblower truck. It stops, and the radio was
blaring ‘Soul Kitchen.’ ‘Okay.’ I said it out loud. ‘Okay. I’ll do the
damn song.'” And she did. MAIREAD CASE See also Stranger Suggests,
page 45.
FAMILY UNDERGROUND, FURSAXA, DULL KNIFE, KATARINA
TUNICATA
(S.S. Marie Antoinette) Tara Burke is a sound-loop artist, but not that
kind of sound-loop artist. Unlike the legions of dudes who use their
digital delay pedals to stack snippets of guitar-based noise into a
clumsy jumble (a trick that stopped being clever around 1999 or so) the
woman behind Philadelphia psych outfit Fursaxa looks for the negative
space in her compositions and harnesses it. Pacing her heavily
improvised songs across delicate 15-minute spans, she’ll play a
melodica line, and wait for the natural pause before adding hand bells,
moaning a bass line vocal, or singing lead vocals. It might not be the
trick of 10 people playing, but it will sound more beautiful than
messy. JOHN VETTESE
SUNDAY 8/12
YARD DOGS ROAD SHOW, GILL LANDRY
(The Triple Door) When Yard Dogs played the Showbox in May, their
cabaret-style presentation was especially disjointed and the vaudeville
troupe were easily upstaged by the opening act, local favorites Circus
Contraption. YDRS founder and frontman Eddy Joe Cotton didn’t seem to
be at the helm of his ship, and one flat act consisted of an absent
magician’s routine projected onto a portable screen. Let’s hope they’ve
tightened the show in the last few months. The Yard Dogs’ eight
multitalented musicians deliver a rowdy mishmash of styles
(guitar-driven acid rock, Gypsy jazz, jug-band folk, surreal melodic
interludes), but it’s the visual delights that earn the price of
admission: Entertainments include a sword-swallower, a
fire-eater/muscleman, a trio of burlesque darlings, and a truly
extraordinary belly dancer, Zoe Jakes. AMY KATE HORN
MONDAY 8/13
THRONES, LOZEN, DOOMHAWK
(Greenhouse) Thrones’ menacing, sludgy doom and boom is made all the
more impressive by its source: the lone figure of Joe Preston,
wrangling a double-necked bass/guitar, surrounded by pedals and
machines, and glowering into a mic. The punk noisemaker has been
wrestling with lo-fi low end for years now, and his live show is a
finely tuned, bowel-liquefying machine. But for all the bass rumble,
programmed double-kick drums, and digitally mangled vocals, there are
also moments of serene calm in Preston’s epics, sublime drones and
sustained tones that hang in the air just a little longer than seems
possible. ERIC GRANDY
TUESDAY 8/14
CONRAD FORD, BIRDS & BATTERIES, OTHER DESERT CITIES,
MIKE DUMOVICH
(Comet Tavern) Listening to Andy McAllister’s plaintive voice, you can
be forgiven for imagining a younger, more innocent Jeff Tweedy.
McAllister’s band, Conrad Ford, traverses the lonesome back roads and
deserted highways of Americana, accompanied by strummed acoustic
guitar, contemplative banjo, and the occasional accordion—and the
always-welcome pedal steel, which could turn even the theme to
The Jeffersons into a tear-in-your-beer country
classic. The band is working on a new album now to follow up their 2006
debut, the quiet, devastating Don’t You Miss Yourself.
McAllister is a devotee of Townes Van Zandt and it shows in his
straightforward delivery and the sneaky way he breaks your heart at
every turn. CHRIS MCCANN
GRAF ORLOCK, COMADRE, TRAINWRECK
(S.S. Marie Antoinette) Every band has its niche, and Graf Orlock is
pure gold for movie nerds. Comprising five film-school dropouts from
Studio City, California, Graf Orlock play brutal hardcore metal themed
in everything cinematic. Half the fun of listening to their albums is
trying to figure out which movies their samples and song titles are
from. The coup de grâce on their new album, Destination Time
Tomorrow, is much better than clever samples, though. I have a
friend who, for a long time, would ask my old band every time he saw us
if we were going to “cover Jurassic Park.” Every show: “Dude,
are you guys going to cover Jurassic Park tonight?” We never
did. Imagine my surprise then when I listened to the new Graf Orlock
album, and sure enough, they cover Jurassic Park. Turns out it
was a good idea after all. JEFF KIRBY
WEDNESDAY 8/15
TALIB KWELI, DJ CHAPS, COMMON MARKET,
(Showbox) See Album Reviews, page 59.
SLY AND ROBBIE WITH HORACE ANDY, CHERINE ANDERSON, TRINITY
SOUNDZ
(Neumo’s) See Stranger Suggests, page 45.
OKAY, THE ELEPHANTS, WALLPAPER, TREE ROOTS IN THE
BASEMENT
(Club SOTA) If you miss this show, you’ll regret it for the next two
years—that’s how much time has passed since Marty Anderson, the
elusive force behind Berkeley pop phenomenon Okay, last took the trip
up north to perform his consummately orchestrated melodies. The man is
a musical architect, building towering walls of tightly arranged
polyphony and reinforcing them with his strange, hauntingly frail
voice. Bells, chirps, and radio waves bend and meld with organic guitar
chords and synthetic drums. His minimalist lyrics are anthems of the
runner-up: dark, disheartened, but never defeated, and at times even
buoyant. While High Road and Low Road, the twin
albums released in 2005, are divided based on their thematic leaning
(the former slightly more optimistic than its glass-half-empty
brother), listening to either is a heavy and affecting experience, and
not without good reason. The records were written and recorded entirely
by Anderson while he was confined to his home with a debilitating
disease, one that makes regular travel impossible. This show is a
chance occurrence, not even part of a tour; it could be another two
years, or longer, before Okay is back in these parts. MOLLY
HAMILTON