THURSDAY 1/18
LICK: DJs FREAKAZOID, AMATEUR YOUTH, MATHMATIX, DEWEY DECIMAL
(Chop Suey) See Stranger Suggests, page 25.
FCS NORTH, HIDDEN HABITATS
(Baltic Room) FCS North's recent album of brilliant electro/disco hybrids, Say Go, got totally slept on probably due to the banal difficulties of running a genuinely independent label in the 21st century. (Full disclosure: Said label hosted my fairly embarrassing first stab at a DJ mix a while ago, but no one made any money or anything.) Their live show aims for the dance floorâthey're talented musicians, and plenty entertaining to watch, but they'd probably prefer enthused movement over passive appreciation any day. Hidden Habitats are a five-headed Hydra of Fourthcity DJs consisting of DJs Kamui, Bumblebee, Hideki, Introcut, and Absolute Madman. They're moving Stop Biting to Thursdays at the Baltic Room after a long, well-loved run at the Lo_Fi, and their thoughtful brand of boom bap should keep the place plenty warm and hopping. ERIC GRANDY
THE JONBENĂT, BEHOLD THE ROLLING THUNDER, THE AMERICAN BLACK LUNG, BLUES
(Ground Zero) Thanks to a sweet distribution deal with East West, the Dallas, Texas, indie Pluto Records was able to dangle the Jonbenét before more listeners than was probably necessary last year. Luckily, once they got there, the four-year-old Houston quartet blew away those listeners via a debut album, Ugly/Heartless, that not only captured the band's in-concert ferocity, but duplicated it. The Jonbenét cut Ugly/Heartless live, loud, and loose in a Houston bar/recording studio, demonstrating their chops by nailing half of the songs on the first take; even though they reveal slightly more melody than was heard on their previous EPs (all of which are collected on 2005's The Plot Thickens), the band's trademark spastic, angular wall of posthardcore noise ensures that things never get too melodious. This month's Dead in Threes tour finds the Jonbenét steamrolling across America with kindred spirits the American Black Lung and Blues in tow. AARON BURGESS
FRIDAY 1/19
Electric Avenue: JACOB LONDON, Dj Recess, dj swank
(CHAC Lower Level) See Data Breaker, page 51.
THE BLACK LIPS, INVISIBLE EYES, TALL BIRDS
(Crocodile) See preview, page 39.
STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS
(Neumo's) See preview, page 35.
NEIL HAMBURGER, PLEASEEASAUR
(Sunset, late) As you probably well know by now, Neil Hamburger has essentially one jokeâa joke that he mines so relentlessly that its individual words cease to carry any meaning. That joke, of course, is that the jokes aren't funny. And that they will never be funny. So why, after over a decade of meager notoriety and presumably dwindling interest, does Hamburger continue to tour, release records, exist? (Perhaps a better question is just why his record label, Drag City, continues to support this strange habit.) Because that's the joke, isn't it? And what kind of comedian would he be if he didn't see it through to the punch line? ZAC PENNINGTON
SATURDAY 1/20
TOM BROSSEAU, MARK PICKEREL & HIS PRAYING HANDS, JOHANNA KUNIN
(Tractor) See preview, page 37.
EMILY HAINES, GUESTS
(Crocodile) Emily Haines makes vaguely feminist (like Jane magazine) and explicitly cynical (like Adbusters) pop with Metric; as a solo artist, she slows down into piano ballad territory without losing any of her barbed lyrical wit. For all her cleverness, Haines always stops just shy of actually saying something substantive with heavily loaded lines like "bros before hos/disagree on the sidelines," "our hell is a good life." With Metric's pinball-quick pop, Haines's weaker ideas flash by fast enough to be entertaining or at least forgotten, but with the slow crawl that dominates Knives Don't Have Your Back, such empty signification takes an awkward center stage. Of course, her voice is beautiful, the piano is fine, and her lyrics hint at all kinds of fascinating depthâit's just exhausting trying to decode them. ERIC GRANDY
ORDER OF THE VULTURE, SPLATTERHOUSE, THE MAKAI, WIZARDS OF WOR, DOOM LIT SKY, IAMTHETHORN
(El CorazĂłn, late) Order of the Vulture's latest album's cover depicts a distressed, deceased Jesus, mouth wretchedly agape, being sword punctured by a hooded ghoul. Anyone appalled by that artwork should probably go ahead and skip the Portland-based band's "Christ Killer" single as well. Those intrigued should love the group's brazenly blasphemous, musically incendiary hybrid approach, which combines crust-punk and black-metal elements. Order of the Vulture don't perfectly fit the latter genre's template: The members' stage names (Junkyard Jackass, Bloody Rich, Set Sothis Nox Law) aren't especially evil, and the group presents its name in a legible font. However, the trio looks intimidating (like the Misfits, but with more spiked spangles), and they sound vicious, with snarling stop-and-start riffs, manic thrash drumbeats, and demonic scratchy vocals. ANDREW MILLER
MOB LAW, MACKLEMORE, SCREAM CLUB, BEAUTIFUL MOTHERS
(Neumo's) If Beth Ditto is Olympia's post-riot Mary J. Blige, and Jenna Riot is its Lil' Kim, then Scream Club member/video director/label mogul (Crunks Not Dead) Cindy Wonderful is Oly's glam-hop Jay-Z. Wonderful's skilled and uniquely credible flow has earned Scream Club raves from artists like Peaches and Yoko Ono, and a favorable review from XXL magazine(?!), who surmised the band's "shit was tight." Scream Club seem poised to bring their self-described brand of "radical, queer, electro-sex, hiphop, pop punk" to the masses. When that day comes, I'll be the first in line for a velour tracksuit with "Crunks Not Dead" across the ass. MA'CHELL DUMA LAVASSAR
SEATTLE METAL FEST: OVERKILL, GOD FORBID, DESTRUCTION, INTO ETERNITY, GOATWHORE, THE HUMAN ABSTRACT, MNEMIC, ARSIS
(Showbox) If bands like Lamb of God represent the evolution of American thrash metal, then New Jersey standard-bearers Overkill are the genre's coelacanth, a living fossil whose resilience and determination defy the laws of natural selection. Still actively touring behind their 14th album since 1980, 2005's ReliXIV, the thrash classicists make perfect headliners for Seattle Metal Fest 2007, a thrash-heavy (pun intended) event that finds 20-plus-year-old German institution Destruction and fast-rising New Jersey powerhouse God Forbid co-headlining atop a younger roster of progressive (Into Eternity), black/sludge (Goatwhore), industrial (Mnemic), and hardcore (the Human Abstract) heavyweights. Newly signed to Nuclear Blast America (home also to Into Eternity and Destruction), left-field Virginia death-metal trio Arsis are situated low on the bill, but arrive early to catch their set: All signs point to their dominating the underground in 2007. AARON BURGESS
SUNDAY 1/21
IAMTHETHORN, BEHOLD, OWEN HART, THIS TIME TOMORROW, THE HELM, STRENGTH TO ENDURE
(The Junkyard, Tacoma) See Stranger Suggests, page 25, and Underage, page 53.
THE SHAPESHIFTERS, CLOCKWERK, TULSI, DJ KRUK
(Chop Suey) A sort of Southern Californian, equally-debauched-if-less-studious answer to the Wu-Tang Clan, the expansively large and shifting collective that is the Shapeshifters make music whose id could cover this earth. With a tremendous variety of MCs alternately filling the ranks they are, like the Wu of old, a truly chaotic property, equally adept at indulging in awesome, weird flows and drunken mayhem. Their last record, 2004's scumbag-beloved The Shapeshifters Was Here, was an epic monument to drug-addled, geeked-out hiphop brotherhood; over the sprawl of its 20 tracks and 80 minutes it fixated on dinosaurs, Transformers, the alien leadership, and generally stained clowning. Perhaps most remarkably, the Shapeshifters claim not just mutual appreciation but true respect from the varied camps of indie hiphop (both Slug of Rhymesayers and Quannum's Pigeon John chimed in on tracks on Was Here). SAM MICKENS
BOWLING FOR SOUP, MELEE, OVER IT, QUIETDRIVE
(El CorazĂłn) Two years agoâalmost to the day, actuallyâI wrote an Up & Coming in which I stated rather offhandedly that Bowling for Soup were unequivocally "the worst band in the history of pop music." Some six months and a couple thousand semiliterate, band-provoked hate letters later, the aging mall punksters elevated my rather low blow to the smelly shoulders of teenagers everywhere, in the form of a misquote on the back of a tour T-shirt. Upon the hollow threat of litigation, the band contacted me personally to offer me one of the shirtsâa settlement which I obviously jumped at. So why am I again writing about Bowling for Soup when neither you nor I even remember what novelty single they rode in on? Because I never got my fucking shirt, that's why. And I'm going to keep writing these stupid previews every time they come to town until I do. ZAC PENNINGTON
TECH N9NE
(Neumo's) The music of Kansas City's Tech N9ne exists in an almost Christian rockâstyle bubble, self-sustaining and seemingly oblivious to rap's mainstream. In the mold of the much-maligned Insane Clown Posse, Tech N9ne has managed to carve out his very own morbid, suicidal speed-rap niche with the independent numbers to match (something like 500K in the last few years). His newest LP, Everready: The Religion, is another dose of his apocalyptically angsty hiphop, with the occasional cut (the venomous "Come Gangsta," or the E-40 featured, Rick Rockâproduced "Jellysickle") to appease fans of his older, more hardcore output. With his Strange Music having inked a distribution deal with Universal last summer, and a cauldron-bubbling fan base, Tech's face paint and spiked hair might end up being the latest "swagger" beaming at you off of the cover of XXL. LARRY MIZELL
MONDAY 1/22
MC VAGINA, KOCHO-BI-SEXUAL, DREAMFOX
(Sunset) MC Vagina's live show has never lived up to the spastic crass and brass experimental hiphop-esque sound blasting from speakers, because until recently, the "band" was only a dude and his friends rapping over the swarms of infected video-game-gone-wrong sound bites being spit out by a CD player. But for the past month or so, MC Vagina has been performing as a real band, playing their songs about pap smears and Scarlett Johansson's vagina with real instruments. Apparently a name change is in the works, to go with the new makeover, but of course KEXP still isn't gonna play 'em. MEGAN SELING
TUESDAY 1/23
Boring.WEDNESDAY 1/24
GREAT NORTHERN, DIVISION DAY, BARTON CARROLL
(Sunset) The music of Barton Carroll creeps me out. And that is a good thing indeed. So many folks in the realms of roots and Americana are so darned likeableâeither as entertainers, or imaginary drinking buddies, or for their folksy humility. But Carroll seems unconcerned with such poses. Which isn't to imply the Seattle vet is a jerk; he's just unashamed of sounding... well, weird, even on recognizable covers like "Dark End of the Street." His recent full-length, Love & War, offers up 10 melancholy miniatures shaded with brass, woodwinds, and strings, plus disquieting chromatic ornamentation. And his singing voice, a tremulous yet tender keen, recalls oddballs like Robert Wyatt or Antony, particularly on haunting originals like "Scorched Earth." This isn't outsider art, per se, but it evokes a similar, beguiling-yet-scary affect. KURT B. REIGHLEY
