THURSDAY 7/20
ARTURO SANDOVAL
(Jazz Alley) See The Score.
DIGABLE PLANETS, RHYMEFEST, LIFESAVAS
(Neumo's) Canceled, see article.
'BALL OF WAX VOL. 5' RELEASE PARTY
(Sunset) The sheer size of the Seattle independent music community can be overwhelming. Even with mailing lists, blogs, and well-meaning friends, it seems impossible to stay abreast of all the talented DIY musicians in our city limits. Thus inspired, local singer-songwriter Levi Fuller last year began compiling Ball of Wax, a super-affordable, lovingly packaged audio digest full of noteworthy, unreleased tracks by Emerald City artists—from the fluttering synth-pop of Plan B to R. B. Reed's gritty neofolk—that might otherwise sit languishing on laptops or 4-tracks. Tonight's $5 cover charge not only guarantees admission, but includes a copy of the Summer 2006 edition CD, featuring all the artists on the bill, and many more. Nice job, Levi—thank God somebody still remembers there's more to "community building" than just adding bands to your friends on MySpace. KURT B. REIGHLEY
FRIDAY 7/21
SCREAM CLUB, THE NACHOS
(High Dive) Scream Club bring Olympia's riot-grrrl politics to the novelty-plagued genre of electro-rap. The results are more Avenue D than Le Tigre, with the political taking a backseat to the personal, rather than riding shotgun. Scream Club seek respect as rappers, working with such indie hiphoppers as Busdriver and the Shapeshifters (their album also features gifted nonrappers such as the Gossip's Beth Ditto and the Need's Rachel Carns), but their skills are better suited for goofy crowd hyping than intricate rhyme schemes. They're much more successful as gender-fucking, feminist party starters, leading the crowd in funny chants and call-and-response choruses over their well-produced beats. ERIC GRANDY
ARTURO SANDOVAL
(Jazz Alley) See The Score.
DIGABLE PLANETS, RHYMEFEST, LIFESAVAS
(Neumo's) Canceled, see article.
LESBIAN, PRIZE COUNTY & THE KEEPER
(Rendezvous) It's indisputable that the Northwest is a perpetually fertile breeding ground for metal—both good and bad. Lesbian definitely count as the former, given the way their psychedelic, dirge-riddled heaviness stands out so dramatically among the current legion of cookie-cutter death-metal purveyors. Lesbian recently completed their debut album, an effort that's been in the works for over a year. Given the advance buzz, I'm willing to earmark these kids as ones to watch. HANNAH LEVIN
JAMES ZABIELA
(Chop Suey) See Data Breaker.
SATURDAY 7/22
EUGENE MIRMAN, MICHAEL SHOWALTER, LEO ALLEN
(Chop Suey) This spring, when Eugene Mirman released his latest CD, En Garde, Society! (Sub Pop), he held a protest in New York's Union Square. He wasn't protesting war, he wasn't protesting child prostitution... he was protesting himself. The crowd of fans gathered in front of his makeshift stage played along and carried picket signs (with his face crossed out), and through fits of giggles, they repeated the words he hollered into the megaphone. "Down with Eugene! Up with people!" "Go back to Russia! Or at least New Hampshire!" The best, though, was "BOO-gene! Fuck YOU-gene!" I can say with confidence that he is one of the funniest comics working today. And tonight's appearance is doubly special because it also features Stella Comedy's Michael Showalter, who is hilarious himself. MEGAN SELING See also Stranger Suggests.
ALEXI MURDOCH
(Crocodile) Earlier this year I had a crisis; I discovered I liked an album that was championed by KCRW disc jockey Nic Harcourt, whose Morning Becomes Eclectic show broadcasts music of echt middlebrow mediocrity while bearing the thinnest veneer of "alternative" cachet. That album is Alexi Murdoch's Time Without Consequence. But I got over it, and unequivocally embraced the disc, which recalls Brit-folk icons John Martyn and Nick Drake's finest output. L.A.-based Scotsman Murdoch lays hushed, ruggedly sensitive vocals over acoustic and electric guitars that entwine like long-lost lovers, forming gently undulant melodies that shiver the soul. Murdoch imbues his songs with a low-key urgency and drama that allow his music to burrow into your mind much more effectively than that of a dozen screamo bands. DAVE SEGAL
PEARL JAM
(Gorge) See preview.
ARTURO SANDOVAL
(Jazz Alley) See The Score.
THE LONG WINTERS
(Neumo's) See CD review.
SHADOWS FALL, POISON THE WELL, IT DIES TODAY, STILL REMAINS
(Showbox) Some bands rudely reject their nourishing indie labels immediately after their breakthrough release, a scenario that bears a striking resemblance to the scrappy-mentor-ditched-for-big-bucks plotline of Rocky V, with all the inherent pathos this connection implies. By contrast, Shadows Fall, who set a Century Media sales record with 2004's The War Within, graduated (to Atlantic) with class. The group's final contract-fulfilling Century Media release, June's Fallout from the War, might be a B-sides and covers collection, but it's an unusually worthy one, with massive stuttered riffs, clarion solos, double-bass drumbeats, and aggressive yet tuneful shouted/sung vocals. Shadows Fall leave Century Media like a lion, and their illegitimate children now dot the metalcore landscape, making it easy for the label to fill its emptied nest. ANDREW MILLER
SUNDAY 7/23
PEARL JAM
(Gorge) See preview.
THE WARRIORS, NODES OF RANVIER, INKED IN BLOOD, PARKWAY DRIVE, VIOLENCE UNFOLDS
(Hells Kitchen, early) In 1979's The Warriors, Luther, villainous head of the Rogues, taunts a rival gang with "Warriors, come out and play!" Ol' Dirty Bastard resurrected that rallying cry in 1993, about the same time people started paying attention to Rage Against the Machine's debut disc. The California-based quintet Warriors flash back to that particular period in hardcore, when screaming in a rap-like cadence over classic-rock riffs still seemed intriguingly innovative. On Warriors' just-released second album, Beyond the Noise, singer Marshall repeats bitter phrases such as "everything lies" with elevating intensity, and the group's dual guitarists chug and churn. With their playfully chaotic shows, Warriors are to Rage what last year's video-game version of The Warriors is to the original film, an equally violent, more animated alternative. ANDREW MILLER
ARTURO SANDOVAL
(Jazz Alley) See The Score.
MICHELLE MALONE, THE MOANERS
(Tractor) See Stranger Suggests.
LEO KOTTKE
(Woodland Park Zoo) I got into Leo Kottke in the mid-'80s after reading a Meat Puppets album review that compared that band's guitarist, Curt Kirkwood, with the fleet-fingered picker. After scoring Kottke's 6- and 12-String Guitar LP, I immediately noticed his influence on Kirkwood's unbelievably fast and fluid playing. Some of the songs on Guitar are so swift and full of unexpected shifts in dynamics, they could give your ears vertigo; others take the opposite tack, bringing the blues into languid, woozy backwaters, inducing a pleasant tipsiness. This ex-member of John Fahey's legendary Takoma Records stable of folk-music mavericks has about four decades of touring behind him, so if you can stand the idea of seeing a concert in a goddamned zoo, you'll be surfeited with glorious acoustic-guitar virtuosity. DAVE SEGAL
MONDAY 7/24
BOOT CAMP CLIK
(Chop Suey) Timbs and hood check! Let's take it back to the days of pretending we were from New York, y'all... you know, rolling our pants leg up, calling each other "son," and all that, 'cause the mighty BCC is coming to town, god! Boot Camp is the only '90s NYC rap supergroup—remember, there were a few—that is still intact, and they'll all be here tonight, in their full BK glory. Buckshot, Smif-N-Wessun, OGC, and my personal favorite, Heltah Skeltah, will doubtless make you forget the stunner shades and have you fatigued-out chanting "Eshkoshka!" LARRY MIZELL JR.
CAPITALIST CASUALTIES, SKARP
(SS Marie Antoinette) I've always felt I should like Capitalist Casualties more than I do. After all, they basically wrote the book on power violence, and they've continued to thrash it to pieces for 20 years. They embody everything I love about punk rock: political hardcore that's all screams and machine-gun-fire drums—the perfect recipe for an exciting live show. But I saw them at Slap a Ham's Fiesta Grande many years ago and I was not blown away. What the fuck? Maybe it was just a bad night. Maybe they followed sleep-inducing Noothgrush or "nobody's-faster-than-us" Phobia, and therefore my mind was numbed—I don't remember. But it must've been a fluke. I know they can destroy live, so I'm still greatly anticipating this show. KIM HAYDEN
CORINNE BAILEY RAE
(Crocodile) See Rocka Rolla.
THE RENTALS, OZMA
(Neumo's) See Underage.
TUESDAY 7/25
GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS, KRISTIN HERSH
(Crocodile) See preview.
THE TRUE BUGS, KISS HER FOR THE KID, THE LOW HAUNTS
(High Dive) So this one time I wrote about Kiss Her for the Kid and I said something like "they're sorta dancey like the Dismemberment Plan, but with less funk and more punk." Well, I was sorta right. Now that the female-fronted local band has released a five-song EP titled Gee, I see that there's even more to Kiss Her for the Kid than that. Hannah Roberts's vocals summon the snottiness of Olympia's indie scene circa 1994 on some tracks ("West Coast Blues" and "Get Lost," especially), but then her voice gets a little soft and haunting like Mazzy Star on the ballad "A Story." When her voice is paired with Sean London's co-vocals, the effect sometimes sounds like the B-52s. And I can't help hearing a little Josie Cotton sneak through during "Boys in Bands." I could continue trying to compare them to other bands all day, but you're probably better off just going to the show and figuring it out for yourself. MEGAN SELING
STANLEY JORDAN
(Jazz Alley) Showing blatant disregard for the Wayne's World–popularized "No 'Stairway'" rule, Stanley Jordan turned Led Zeppelin's epic into a majestically impressionistic instrumental. Similarly, Jordan transforms everything from the Beatles' baroque strings ("Eleanor Rigby") to John Coltrane's sax ("Impressions") into entrancingly fluid guitar melodies, using his unique "touch" technique. As he wrote in a 1984 Guitar Player article, this two-hand tapping approach enables him to serve as a "self-contained soloist," supplementing his own leads with chords and bass lines. Seeing instrumental specialists can be numbing, but Jordan epitomizes jazz cool live, making spectacularly difficult pieces such as his signature original "Flying Home" seem effortlessly improvised. ANDREW MILLER
DAVID PAJO, LEVATOR, HOLLY THROSBY
(Tractor) The last time Seattle saw Dave Pajo, it was at the heavily anticipated Slint show at the Showbox (probably the best indie-rock reunion I've experienced). The warm confines of the Tractor on a Tuesday night will create quite a different atmosphere—but an entirely appropriate one for Pajo's softer sonic palette of quietly beautiful, acoustic guitar- and synth-accented songs. Let's just hope he doesn't suffer the unfortunate fate of too many recent Tractor performers: audience members, please be kind and refrain from yammering over his set, will ya? HANNAH LEVIN
WEDNESDAY 7/26
STANLEY JORDAN
(Jazz Alley) See Tuesday's preview.
OS MUTANTES, SIR RICHARD BISHOP
(Moore) See preview.
SAY HI TO YOUR MOM, DIRTY ON PURPOSE, SOME BY SEA
(Paradox) See CD review.
TRUCKSTOP SOUVENIR
(Sunset) See Border Radio.
TAKING BACK SUNDAY, FORGIVE DURDEN, THE SUBWAYS: Thurs July 27, the Premier
THE RACONTEURS, KELLEY STOLTZ: Thurs July 27, Moore
CAPITOL HILL BLOCK PARTY: MURDER CITY DEVILS, COMMON MARKET, PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES, BAND OF HORSES, HIMSA, BLACK ANGELS, AND MANY MORE: Fri–Sat July 28–29, 10th Ave and Pike St
BUZZCOCKS, THE ADORED, THE STRAYS: Sat July 29, El CorazĂłn
THE VELVET TEEN, SPARROWS SWARM & SING, THIS WILL DESTROY YOU, ELPHABA: Sat Aug 5, the Paradox
ENDFEST: RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, THE MARS VOLTA, SNOW PATROL, WOLFMOTHER, EAGLES OF DEATH METAL, ROCK KILLS KID, NINE BLACK ALPS, THE SUBWAYS, THE GOSSIP: Sat Aug 12, White River Amphitheatre
GORILLA BISCUITS, SINKING SHIPS, SHOOK ONES, THE VOWS: Wed Aug 16, El CorazĂłn
COMETS ON FIRE, KINSKI, 16 BITCH PILE UP: Sat Aug 19, Neumo's
WOLF PARADE, FROG EYES: Mon Aug 21, Showbox
CRACKER: Tues Aug 22, Crocodile
DEVO: Sat Sept 9, Paramount
RANCID, THE AQUABATS: Tues–Wed Sept 26–27, Showbox
