Thursday 6/11

Sho Nuph Benefit: TC Izlam, Gabriel Teodros, WD4D, Naha, Silent Lambs Project, more

(Trinity) See My Philosophy.

Shellac, Arcwelder

(Vera) See Stranger Suggests.

Shmootzi the Clod

(Cafe Racer) See Stranger Suggests.

A Camp

(Crocodile) A Camp is the solo project of (Swedish and typically, ridiculously elfin-looking) singer Nina Persson of the Cardigans. On the band's most recent album, Colonia, Persson deploys her capable, ranging voice in service of big, brightly orchestrated, vaguely country-western pop songs. Nothing here is quite as insanely ear-worming as the Cardigans' biggest stateside hits, but maybe that's for the best anyway. A Camp have a forthcoming Covers EP on which the band tackle the likes of Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and Grace Jones (recall the Cardigans' silly, sweetly loungey cover of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" and know that Persson is well up to the task). ERIC GRANDY

Friday 6/12

Shellac, Arcwelder

(Vera) See Stranger Suggests.

Cylob, Hecate, Cursed Chimera

(Re-bar) See Data Breaker.

No Age

(Triple Door) Tonight, as part of the Seattle International Film Festival, L.A. noise punks No Age will perform an original, never before heard score for Jean-Jacques Annaud's 1988 film The Bear. All I remember about this movie is the scene where the orphaned baby bear eats a psychedelic mushroom and everything starts to look like it's coming through a prism or a kaleidoscope. No Age should really have some fun with that one. But given their facility with distressed, color-bleeding ambiences, tension-building guitar loops, and balls-out rhythmic racket, they should have no problem scoring the whole film in high style. ERIC GRANDY

Noise for the Needy: the Whore Moans, Speaker Speaker, the Raggedy Anns, Wallpaper

(Underground Events Center) The Underground Events Center is too finished to really feel like a basement, but for tonight, let's pretend that it's exactly that. Should be easy enough—with no windows or doors to open, the show will be hot and sweaty and loud enough to boil the wax in your ears (ew). Therefore, it will be awesome. The Whore Moans are messy, fast, and fun rock and roll with some blues, punk, and seizures thrown in for texture. Speaker Speaker aren't nearly that gnarly, but they have moved away from the bright pop that they started with, instead going down a darker, more (wonderfully) aggressive path. (Similar to how 24 Hour Revenge Therapy compares to Dear You, maybe, but with fewer bum-outs.) MEGAN SELING

Noise for the Needy: Grand Archives, See Me River, the Curious Mystery

(Crocodile) Grand Archives play tonight's Noise for the Needy benefit on the heels of what looks like one hell of a European tour with Wooden Birds. Not sure if their travels will result in them breaking out any new material tonight, but I do know that every time that Mat Brooke and company sing the word "terrified" on their album-opening "Torn Blue Foam Couch," I feel gently lifted. Seriously, go listen to that song again if you haven't in a while. It is a motherfucking solid. See Me River are a folk ensemble led by the dour baritone of Kerry Zettel; they sound like they all basically live in a dark, cavernous basement tavern (oh, wait). Their song "Don't Pray for Blood" is a perfect mix of rousing and doomed. The Curious Mystery's best country-tinged songs go beyond mere melancholy into full-blown narcotic nod, only to come alive again via some seriously rocking rhythms. ERIC GRANDY

Saturday 6/13

Noise for the Needy: Art Brut, Miike Snow

(Neumos) Miike Snow are three dudes (two from Sweden, one from New York City) whose production credits include Madonna, Britney Spears, and Kylie Minogue. Their self-titled debut is as expertly produced as you'd expect from such a pedigree, ditching the diva pop for blue-eyed soul and R&B (male) singing crooned over bright and breezy high-gloss electro-pop tracks. There's the sunny, ska-inflected, slightly Peter Gabriel–esque "Animal," with its loping beat, pasted synth horns, and up-picked guitar. There's the archly melancholic "Burial" ("Don't forget to cry/At your own burial"), whose lyrics are offset by a mellow xylophone melody, vocals stretched out like taffy or spun with air like cotton candy. It's not a flawless album ("Silvia" is skippable, even upon first listen), but it's hard to really get mad at anything this light and easy and ably done. One listen, and half of this album is totally stuck in my head. ERIC GRANDY See also preview, and Stranger Suggests.

Noise for the Needy: Pt Juncture, WA; Black Whales; the Pica Beats; Grant Olsen

(Chop Suey) The great thing about this year's Noise for the Needy festival is that just about every genre gets a turn in the spotlight. So tonight, while Black Eyes & Neckties and Loving Thunder rip the roof off the Wildrose, fans of a more-mellow vibe will sway and gaze at their shoes for Portland's Point Juncture, WA. The band's shimmering and swirling songs have blasts of tambourine, horns, and harmonies that have earned them comparisons to Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, and Spoon. Openers Black Whales are one of my favorite bearded, folk-tinged acts in Seattle right now (which is saying a lot, as there are many). If you find the Fleet Foxes' campfire sing-alongs to be a little too precious, you might want to try Black Whales on for size. MEGAN SELING

Sunday 6/14

Sapient, Candidt, Xperience, Rudy & the Rhetoric, Iame, Smoke, Sadistik

(Nectar) See My Philosophy.

Noise for the Needy: Constantines, Crystal Antlers, I Was a King, Hey Marseilles

(Neumos) Constantines are a Toronto band that make Americana-inflected rock 'n' roll that's toughed up with a little post-hardcore distortion and disregard for vocal-cord damage. The most common critical formula deployed to describe them is Fugazi + Bruce Springsteen, and loath as I am to give in to such a trite construction, the equation kind of works. In addition to the Constantines' core members having formerly formed an "emotional" hardcore band, their current sound is marked as much by odd, aggressive rhythms, angry guitars, and strained shouting as it is by carefully crafted balladry and archetypal hard-luck lyricism. Their latest album, last year's Kensington Heights, finds them slowing down a bit and focusing more on those ballads, but there are still plenty of ripping, big choruses, and the band's live show is sure to be amped up. ERIC GRANDY

Monday 6/15

Jay Reatard, Thee Oh Sees, Idle Times

(Crocodile) See preview.

The Church, Adam Franklin

(Triple Door) The Church and Adam Franklin (of Swervedriver fame and also kicking it with Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino in Magnetic Morning) prove that rockers can "mature" with dignity while not blanding the fuck out. Australia's the Church have been honing their lustrous psych pop for 29 years, scoring a couple of hits, but during this long span, like a more palatable Legendary Pink Dots, just unassumingly churning out moody, baroque, artful songs for a diehard cult following. In Swervedriver, Franklin wrote a slew of classic power-shoegaze anthems; his solo work hasn't attained those heights, but recent albums like Spent Bullets and Bolts of Melody tap into a more subdued, equally beautiful strain of epic rock. His somewhat complicated tunesmithery paradoxically connects with a disarming emotional directness (see particularly the gradually swelling ballad "It Hurts to See You Go"). DAVE SEGAL

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, DJ Darek Mazzone

(Neumos) In a 2005 documentary about Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, singer-songwriter Reuben M. Koroma makes this revealing statement: "When I became refugee [during the Sierra Leone civil war, he and his family fled to Guinea], I thought it would be for short while, a year or so. I had no idea it was going to last so long." What we find in this statement is something that comes close to the truth of this way, mode, level of life—being stateless, homeless, deracinated by war. That truth? Being a refugee is not exceptional or extraordinary. It can happen to anyone, at any time, and become permanent. In the lyrics of Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, a band that formed in a refugee camp, this way of life, which is not uncommon (over 14 million refugees exist worldwide), is given its expression in what can only be described as bittersweet reggae. CHARLES MUDEDE

Star Anna, Nico Vega, Children Collide

(Tractor) Between Neko Case, Jesse Sykes, and Zera Marvel, Washington's become the proving ground for strong female alt-country vocalists. But now we should all make room for our newest export: Star Anna's got the goods. Her songs are a little more rock and roll than our other country chanteuses'—there's a metric shit-ton more electric guitar on any three of her tracks than in Case's entire body of work, for instance—but Star Anna's country cred is undeniable, as when she growls, "I'm not drunk enough to feel like I'm free" on "Spinning My Wheels." Her smoky, slightly cracked vocals aren't as polished as Case's, either, but that's okay, too: Barroom tragedy comes in all kinds of flavors. PAUL CONSTANT

Tuesday 6/16

Femi Kuti & the Positive Force

(Showbox at the Market) Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the most brilliant African musician of the 20th century (he died of complications brought on by AIDS in 1997), didn't make music so much as he did a society of music—and a beat dynasty in the process. His son Femi was educated in this society. He toured with his father and learned to play the saxophone and sing protest songs. When it comes to musicianship, Femi is better than his father; however, when it comes to composition and songwriting, Fela is better than his son. Femi's 12-year-old son is now receiving an education through the musical society his grand-father built. The boy is learning how to play a mean saxophone. One day he will become the king of the realm of the Afrobeat. CHARLES MUDEDE

PJ Harvey and John Parish

(Moore) Made in collaboration with musician/producer/friend John Parish, A Woman a Man Walked By is the big, juicy PJ Harvey album fans have been waiting for since Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. After her last couple of attenuated experiments—the four-track Uh Huh Her and the piano-only White Chalk—A Woman a Man... feels like a sonic rebirth, with Parish's soundscaping giving Harvey an unusually lush playground for her high-drama weirdness. Early tour reports suggest theatricality of a level Harvey's shunned since the mind-boggling To Bring You My Love tour, complete with screaming, weeping, and skintight geisha gowns. DAVID SCHMADER

Au Revoir Simone, Findlay Brown

(Neumos) I'm a sucker for catchy pop with fragile female lead vocals. In the past, it's led me to make some very bad music-purchasing decisions (just because I liked Belly's sound doesn't mean I had to buy two goddamned Tanya Donelly albums). Au Revoir Simone, though, make the kind of fragile girl-vox pop it's okay for everyone to like: The electronic backbeats are a perfect complement to the ethereal vocals. One strengthens the other and transforms the music from more than just a fey exploration of one woman's tenuous relationship with, well, relationships to a soundtrack for a world slightly more beautiful and meaningful than the one in which we're all currently living. PAUL CONSTANT

Julie Doiron, Erik Blood, Dog Day

(Tractor) Erik Blood's recent The Way We Live is shaping up to be one of the top Seattle-centric rock releases of 2009. While it displays the guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist's uncanny ear for sumptuous shoegaze production values and cinematic arrangements, it also reveals his knack for crafting tunes that endure in your mind like memories of momentous occasions, most of them bittersweet. (Songs evoking conflicting emotions usually resonate more deeply, if you're doing it right, and Blood surely is.) See him live for the instantaneous pop rush, but also get The Way We Live for the lifelong pleasures it will surely grant. DAVE SEGAL

Wednesday 6/17

The B-52s

(Woodland Park Zoo) With their beehive hairdos, retro lingo, and Hullabaloo dances, the B-52s were a nostalgia act from the beginning—which makes their transition to actual nostalgia act both poignant and meaningless. Helping: the band's surprisingly high-quality recent output, with last year's Funplex a fun and filthy addition to their oeuvre. At tonight's zoo show, expect a smattering of Funplex tracks alongside every single B-52s song you know and love. (They like to have fun even more than you do, and the eternal thrills of their greatest hits are still not lost on them.) DAVID SCHMADER

The Germs, Poison Idea, Krum Bums, the Bloodclots

(Neumos) Look, don't even sweat it that the Germs have replaced Darby Crash with a 31-year-old Hollywood actor named Shane West who starred in that reverent, dull movie about Darby Crash last year. Never mind the children dressed like 1977 and the creaky old geezers like Jello Biafra and Fat Mike who are whining that that's disrespectful, that's inauthentic. Darby Crash was the opposite of authenticity—he was a Ziggy Stardust fan, a fabulist and epic liar who burned up his life trying to turn it into myth. So some buffed and blow-dried Hollywood type with nice skin and well-tended teeth wants to step into the shoes Jan Paul Beahm willfully vacated almost 30 years ago? I'm not so sure Darby Crash would've disapproved. BRENDAN KILEY