THURSDAY 10/4

GREG DULLI, PETRA HADEN,
JEFF KLEIN, TIM
SEELY

(Triple Door) See Underage, page 69.

BUILT TO SPILL, CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN, THE
DELUSIONS

(Showbox at the Market) I trust Built to Spill more than any other
band. Their albums are consistently well executed and interesting
despite the fact they’ve released seven of them. If Doug Martsch wanted
to start writing tedious songs just because, he could and the band
would still sell records and still fill the Showbox three fucking
nights in a row. But the band hasn’t gotten lazy over the years;
they’ve gotten better. Their latest, You in Reverse, threatens
to be their best yet. Assertive guitars noodle around in the
eight-minute adventure “Goin’ Against Your Mind,” and the more
alt-country tinged “Liar” possesses a calm, dreamy quality.
“Conventional Wisdom” is a bright rock song and promises to sound
fantastic live. Everything Built to Spill does sounds fantastic live,
actually—even the inevitable ADD-mocking, 25-minute jam sessions
that interrupt their hit-filled sets. Built to Spill really can do no
wrong. MEGAN SELING

FRIDAY 10/5

THE BLAKES, THE COPS, THE OLD HAUNTS

(Crocodile) See album review, page 59.

BUILT TO SPILL, CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN, THE
DELUSIONS

(Showbox) See Thursday’s preview.

BRENT AMAKER & THE RODEO, THE VALLEY SHANE TUTMARC
& THE TRAVELING MERCIES

(Tractor) See preview, page 47.

SING SING: SINDEN

(War Room) See Stranger Suggests, page 29.

THE WEAKERTHANS, THE LAST TOWN CHORUS, JEREMY
FISHER

(Neumo’s) Growing old gracefully isn’t easy, especially for
anarcho-punk rockers. But John K. Samson (long ago a member of Fat
Wreck Chords Propagandhi) has managed as much with the Weakerthans.
Over the course of four albums, Samson has slowly sloughed off the punk
rock to reveal thoughtful folk, frost-bitten country, and painfully
smart pop (he’s the kind of lyricist who will internally rhyme
“dissemble” and “December” in a line about rush-hour traffic) that
deals elegantly with the subjects of love, age, and fading idealism.
Their latest, Reunion Tour, finds the band further
mellowing—songs such as “Civil Twilight” and “Tournament of
Hearts” are faint glimmers of the anxious energy still abundant on
1997’s Fallow and 2000’s Left and Leaving. But Samson’s
songwriting remains strong and poignant as ever, and there are some
treats for fans, such as the Reconstruction Site sequel “Virtute
the Cat Explains Her Departure.” ERIC GRANDY

SATURDAY 10/6

THE BLAKES, THE SATURDAY KNIGHTS

(Easy Street, West Seattle) See album review, page 59.

BUILT TO SPILL, CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN, THE
DELUSIONS

(Showbox) See Thursday’s preview.

SUNDAY 10/7

GEORGE JONES

(Paramount) See Stranger Suggests, page 29, and Turn You On, page
57.

MONDAY 10/8

SHE WANTS REVENGE, KENNA,
IO ECHO

(Showbox at the Market) Justin Warfield: Put down the guyliner and
ditch the guitar. I understand the need for artistic evolution, but
damn, man—you were such a badass MC back in ’92, and this
electro-goth-lite is really beneath you. My Field Trip to Planet
9 is a stone classic—a stoned classic,
really—the first truly tripped-out, psychedelic hiphop album, way
ahead of its time. Dense, head-spinning production by Prince Paul,
reverbed rhymes about LSD, Korova Milk Bar, and Naked Lunch. You
predated Edan by a decade! That shit made my senior year of high
school! The only thing She Wants Revenge is making is a
fair-to-middling Depeche Mode knockoff. Dude, you’re Jarobi’s cousin!
Hiphop is in your blood! Come back, Justin! JONATHAN ZWICKEL

TUESDAY 10/9

METRIC, CRYSTAL CASTLES

(Showbox at the Market) See Stranger Suggests, page 29.

MICHAEL IAN BLACK AND
MICHAEL SHOWALTER

(Neumo’s) Technically this isn’t a rock show, but it sure as hell
will rock. God that’s a terrible intro. I’m really sorry. I’m under a
lot of pressure here! It’s really hard to write about two of the
funniest men in America (as voted by me) without (a) using their own
jokes as examples and ruining them, (b) coming off like a fangirl with
a ridiculous grade-school crush on the class clown, or (c) making them
sound not funny at all by desperately insisting they are. But I swear
to Christ Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, two-thirds of the
dildo-obsessed comedy troupe Stella, are hilarious. Their
exaggerated facial expressions alone make me nearly piss my pants, and
Black’s deadpan delivery only makes Showalter’s self-deprecation and
giddy desire to be loved that much funnier. MEGAN SELING

WEDNESDAY 10/10

FILM SCHOOL, THE HUGS, EULOGIES

(Crocodile) Film School are the perfect companions for your
nostalgia trip to the early ’90s, when bands like My Bloody Valentine,
Ride, and Slowdive made every day feel rainy and every heart feel
broken. The California band builds on that shoegaze sound, twisting
guitar lines ever more tightly around each other, embracing the
cool/desperate dichotomy, and reveling in the glorious darkness of it
all. It sounds old and new at the same time. Lead singer Greg Bertens
picked up a new bassist (Lorelei Plotczyk), guitarist (Dave Dupuis),
and drummer (erstwhile Seattleite James Smith) for the new album,
Hideout, and the result is majestic, atmospheric, and downright
beautiful. And it certainly is fun to glance backward now and then to
that heady time when feeling bad felt oh so good. CHRIS
McCANN

FUJIYA & MIYAGI, DIRTY ON
PURPOSE, PROJECT JENNY,

PROJECT JAN

(Neumo’s) Fujiya & Miyagi are actually three pale
Brits—Steve Lewis, David Best, and Matt Hainsby—with a
knack for taut Krautrockin’ grooves, coolly whispered vocals (“We were
just pretending to be Japanese”), and moments of inexplicable but
infectious white-boy funk. Their third album, 2006’s Transparent
Things, is full of deadly creepers, songs that begin as mellow nods
then quietly grow into irresistibly propulsive jams—before you
know it, you’re busting all the stiff, lame moves that the phrase
“white-boy funk” invokes. Dirty on Purpose are an inoffensive,
occasionally grand vanilla rock quartet from Brooklyn with some pretty
cute music videos. Project Jenny, Project Jan are in fact two
dudes—Sammy Rubin and Jeremy Haines, also from
Brooklyn—whose genre-skimming, sample-heavy pop, studied rapping
and scatting, and weak electronica is just fucking awful. Arrive late.
ERIC GRANDY

MAGIK MARKERS, I’M A GUN

(Sunset) The selling point for Boss, the new LP from East
Coast noise nerds Magik Markers, is that it’s their first with actual
precomposed songs. Let’s face it, that’s hilarious. After trimming down
to a duo, the band forsook the unrelenting sonic violence of their
infancy for a crisp postpunk/pop approach that still swarms with the
same tensions under a (relatively) conventional surface. Guitarist
Elisa Ambrogio’s icy vocals consider desire’s destructive hunger, while
drummer/multi-instrumentalist Pete Nolan draws from his cobwebbed solo
project Spectre Folk to fill the remaining space with buzz, creak, and
hiss. Taking this leap into linear songsmithery could be the boldest
step possible for a band so identified with improvisatory sound. Such
maverick spirit suggests Magik Markers might be capable of anything.
FRED BELDIN

THE SADIES, CHUCKANUT DRIVE, THE BELTHOLES

(Tractor) Used to be the Sadies were frontrunners in the barely
lucrative world of country genre amalgamation. But as the Toronto band
near the decade mark, their roots/rockabilly/blues/boogie/whatever has
been copped by too many kids who think the term “alt-country” actually
means something. Perhaps that’s why brothers Dallas and Travis Good
accept the role as genre statesmen on their latest studio album, New
Seasons, on which they rein in their trademark yip ‘n’ howl romps
to focus on their songwriting craft. The subdued, tempered result
sounds like a Jayhawks record for the most part, but the band’s vigor
is still plenty apparent on psych-country numbers like “A Simple
Aspiration,” which means the band’s reputation for hootin’, hollerin’,
guitars-blazin’ concerts should still be intact. SAM
MACHKOVECH

BILL CALLAHAN (FORMERLY SMOG), SIR RICHARD
BISHOP

(Triple Door) In “To Be of Use,” Bill Callahan crooned, “Most of my
fantasies are of making someone else come.” I always admired the song’s
lonesome, generous nature until I found out he was dating the love of
my life, Joanna Newsom. Suddenly, Callahan was actualizing my fantasies
as well as his own, and it made me want to sick up all over. I felt
like he was my admired college professor, tall and handsome with a deep
voice and published work, and he was dating the most beautiful and
intelligent girl in my class, thus denying all of us her age the chance
to woo her. Every day I’d curse Professor Callahan behind his back; I
detested him, but I would trade places with him in an instant. That
lucky bastard. Hear me now, Bill Callahan: Someday, somehow, I will
take that which you hold most dear. JEFF KIRBY