• Tacoma’s seminal garage-fathers, the Sonics, played a sold-out show on Saturday at Showbox at the Market with Seattle grunge-masters Mudhoney. We are happy to say, the Sonics (some members now in their 70s) totally still got it, and their encore included “Strychnine,” “The Witch,” and a cover of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Mudhoney played the hits with a few new songs mixed in from their upcoming album Vanishing Point—one young man could no longer contain himself and jumped from a bar ledge into the crowd, where he skidded sideways, composed himself, and continued dancing like a maniac.
• The clear winner of Super Bowl XLVII was, of course, Beyoncé, whose tight choreography and obviously not lip-synched diva hits (and who the hell cares about a lip-synched national anthem? Beyoncé can do whatever she wants with that stale number) absolutely killed it. Despite rumors that it wasn’t going to happen, B was joined by her Destiny’s Child bandmates Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams after all.
• Whatever was playing at the Paramount Theater on Saturday night let out around 11 p.m., unleashing tutu’d teens, goggle-wearers, and so much street-side vomiting into downtown. (Update: The show was something called Excision, which is apparently Canadian wubby-dubstep that sounds/looks/is exactly like a poor man’s Skrillex. KIDS. UGH.)
• Shoegaze-rock gods My Bloody
Valentine finally followed up their classic 1991 LP Loveless, releasing m b v on a freakin’ Saturday night—a perverse move that upstaged the Super Bowl (no, really). The nine-track album (which was issued digitally through mybloodyvalentine.org, physical copies become available February 22) holds no real surprises—although “Nothing Is” and “Wonder 2” deviate somewhat from previous MBV output. The new full-length “merely” sounds like the logical successor to Loveless, and for many devoted fans, that’s quite enough.
• Woven Hand played a seriously
sptwangly™ (spooky + twang + the letter ‘l’) show at Chop Suey on Friday night. Lead Hand and ex–16 Horsepower singer David Edwards wore a weird farmer hat—looking something like Tom Petty and Britt Danielson, with a little Poltergeist in there—and growled lyrics and Bible verses (terrifying!) to an awestruck audience over resonating, skeleton-shaking neofolk music. The winner of the Best Dressed Audience Member of the night goes to sleeveless shirt/coonskin hat man. Not bad!
• The Grizzled Mighty, River Giant, Rose Windows, and Kithkin played Neumos on Friday. A hot tipper tells us: “River Giant guys both look like Steve Jobs’s sons and one of them had a cool Cosby sweater. Rose Windows played their hit, which will probably be in a ton of commercials and TV shows soon. Kithkin are the new Animal Collective meets Television. And Grizzled Mighty are like the White Stripes had a baby with Reignwolf.” 