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MONDAY
METAL/PUNKSuicide Forest, Isenordal, Vouna, Ox Hunger
One look at the band name Suicide Forest, and itâs easy to imagine they arenât gonna be singing songs for a casual Sunday morning stroll through the park. Crawling from Tucsonâs underground scene, these purveyors of grim black-metal say it best on their Bandcamp with this poignant declaration: âSeeking to promote self-destruction and nihilism and serving as a reminder that your existence is meaningless and that we are all equally worthless.â Show up in time for melodic Seattle-based black-metal band Isenordal, who use cellos and organs to add a layer of beauty to the filth. KEVIN DIERS
Rise Up Belltown!
The organizers of this event invite you to "join with the #HumansOfBelltown as we showcase our community and convince the City that this place is worth saving." What does that mean for you, the festival-goer? Local food and drink, burlesque, pinball, tattoos (!!), and music by Pops, Hilltalks, Die Nasty, Ghost Mode, Die Nasty, and Toecutter. Proceeds will benefit the Rise Up campaign to keep Belltown affordable.
MONDAY, WEDNESDAY & FRIDAY
CLASSICAL/OPERA2018 Seattle Chamber Music Society Summer Festival
Seattle Chamber Music Society is, once again, throwing their Summer Festival, with free informal recitals and full orchestral performances for all ages throughout the month of July. The cabal of esteemed artists involved this year will include Mary Lynch, Andrew Wan, Benjamin Beilman, Jonathan Vinocour, Astrid Schween, George Li, and many more. Plus, don't miss the Music Under The Stars series, during which a student ensemble sets up in a park and plays to whoever shows up, often folks with picnic blankets in tow and maybe a surreptitious bottle of wine or two, after which Benaroya Hall pipes in whatever festival performance is happening that night.
MONDAY-SUNDAY
JAZZJazz Port Townsend Festival
Here is what you have to do: drive down to the ferry dock, drive onto a ferry, cross the bay on this ferry, exit the ferry, drive across the island, cross some bridges, stop at a gas station for something fried, salty, and not good for you, eventually enter Port Townsend, and, before heading to Fort Worden State Park, admire a number of the townâs Victorian-style homes. When you finally park your car in the pretty park, roll down your window and listen to jazz music from the Jazz Port Townsend Festival in the sun-brightened air. Cars were not made for the city, but for short trips like this. CHARLES MUDEDE
TUESDAY
ROCK/POPCalpurnia
We won't dare call them "cute," but Canadian teenage indie four-piece (and BFFs) Calpurnia will make your adolescent rock dreams come true with an exuberant, sunny set of original songs (and possibly some covers by David Bowie, the Beatles, and Nirvana). Oh, and the lead singer and guitarist, Finn Wolfhard, plays Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things.
Sam Evian, Black Belt Eagle Scout
Sam Owens fronts Celestial Shore, a band known for quick-twitch rhythms and knotty guitar work, but for his solo project Sam Evian, he dials back the complexity and the volume. Second album You, Forever is a rock record that brings to mind the milder side of 1960s psychedelia and the wood-paneled ambience of 1970s singer-songwriter music. Upon hearing Owensâs vocalsâa gentle, reedy tenor constantly swathed in reverbâitâs hard to avoid thinking of John Lennon (or at the very least, the dude from Tame Impala). Aside from rollicking single âHealth Machine,â the music rarely rises above a murmur, but thereâs a tacit confidence to his understated approach. ANDREW GOSPE
WEDNESDAY
ELECTRONICGhost Soda, Pablos Legs, Fine
Sink into the intricacies of the local electro-pop scene with live sets by murky dream-spinner Ghost Soda with Pablos Legs and Fine.
Mournful Congregation, Bell Witch, Mortiferum
If you thought that Sleepâs Dopesmokerâwhich consists of one 60-minute songâwas long, grab a bong and throw Seattle duo Bell Witchâs magnificent 2017 release, Mirror Reaper, on your turntable and get lost in the journey that is a gorgeous yet crushing one-song 83-minute album. I recently saw them perform the entire thing during their opening set for the aforementioned Sleep at the Showbox, and itâs just as powerful live as it is on vinyl. But donât leave after Bell Witch, as Australiaâs Mournful Congregation are some of the true pioneers of the funeral-doom sound, tuning low and playing slow for more than 24 years. KEVIN DIERS
THURSDAY
METAL/PUNKNaomi Punk, Dreamdecay, Casual Hex, So Pitted
A free DIY showcaseâeasily worth a Jack$onâat Everyday Music, like this menagerie of wild fleabags, is why the Pacific Northwest punk scene is the gift that keeps on giving. Naomi Punk, caustic legends out of Olympia; Dreamdecay, dissonant luminaries of post-hardcore medleys; Casual Hex, deconstructive iconoclasts of no wave; and So Pitted, dadaist slackers of abrasive anthems. Four bands with their own distinguished dissent, but who are cut from a similar contrarian cloth. Capitol Hill Block Party will have just ended, so theyâll put some gritty life back into the hood again with some dirty-ass punk rock. ZACH FRIMMEL
WEEED, Abronia, Prana Crafter
Tonight serves as the album-release party for sensitive guitarist Prana Crafter (aka Will Sol, who lives on the Olympic Peninsula), whoâs dropping Enter the Stream on the Sunrise Ocean Bender label in late July. Sol's fifth album finds him exploring the tranquil end of the cosmic-folk spectrum. Dulcet, vulnerable vocals lend his songs a Galaxie 500âesque glaze while Solâs contemplative guitar strums and glinting chimes tilt things into Jerry Garcia, Popol Vuh, and early Deuter territory. We definitely need more of this heady, back-to-nature peacemongering, and Prana Crafter is one of the finest in the region at doling it out. DAVE SEGAL
FRIDAY
BLUES/COUNTRY/FOLKAlela Diane, Mariee Sioux
Nouveau psych-folk artist Alela Diane's new album, Cusp, may have fewer fiddles and cleaner production than her previous albums, but her lucid voice remains silky as ever. The Portland-based artist will be joined by folk singer Mariee Sioux on this tour stop.
Bradford Loomis
Bradford Loomis "digs the root of American folklore" with simple strumming and melancholy ballads suitable for a camping trip at a river.
Cody Johnson
Cody Johnson's 2014 album Cowboy Like Me earned him the attention of Nashville big wigs, and he's been crooning country originals with solid instrumentation and easygoing melodies ever since.
Research Turns 3: Beautiful Swimmers, Mor Elian & D.Dan
Andrew Field-Pickering and Ari Goldman have been DJing back-to-back as Beautiful Swimmers for a decade, making them some of the foremost practitioners of a style thatâs too often reduced to novelty. The lengthy partnership grew out of a shared love of club cultureâboth are inveterate crate-diggers, manage record labels, and show unbridled enthusiasm during their sets. The duoâs selections are rooted in classic house, but they use their depth of knowledge to expand their sets into garage, jungle, post-punk, and a litany of other far-flung styles. Theyâre a worthy pick to head the third anniversary of Research, the cityâs most reliable source for seeing high-quality DJs. ANDREW GOSPE
Lea Bertucci, Chloe Alexandra Thompson
Lea Bertucci is a NYC-based sound artist/composer with a keen ear for what makes minimalism compelling. Her Bandcamp bio says her work "bridges performance, installation, and multichannel activations of acoustic space,â so chances are her rigorous compositions will sound amazing in Chapel's acoustically optimal milieu. Bertucci commonly runs woodwind and string instruments through electronic treatments to subtly warp their standard timbres. This process comes to stunning fruition on her 2018 album Metal Aether. Its four tracks foster a hall-of-mirrors, lost-in-infinite-refractions-of-sound feeling, which is a rare and beautiful thing. The piece âSustain and Dissolveâ offers a succinct description of what her mesmerizing music does. DAVE SEGAL
Styles P, Sa-Roc, Black Stax
Styles P, a member of Yonkers hiphop group LOX, who formed in the '90s by then-teenaged Styles P, Jadakiss, and Sheek Louch, will be joined tonight by Sa-Roc and Black Stax.
MxPx
MxPxâs best-known cut, âChick Magnet,â told my story! No, really! I was always sitting there, unable to even get a woman to talk to me. And the guy next to me scored at will, and I could never figure out why or how. As I got older (not necessarily wiser), I met other fellows who thought MxPx were singing their song, too. And so I learned my story isnât so special. A few years ago, I met the Chick Magnet (my Chick Magnet) on a bus platform. Iâd noticed him back in town, wasnât sure whether to talk. He was divorced, he said. He never saw his children. A few years later, his son died. And so I learned that even Chick Magnets live with what they conceal and they muster through. A painfully human moment sprung from punk-pop. ANDREW HAMLIN
Sashay, Nudity, Matriarch
Local queercore impressers Sashay tear it up. If you donât already know that, then this is the time to see them in all their galvanizing punk-rock glory, as their irreverent anthems, adrenaline-racing power chords, and â80s-hardcore stimuli fly at you full speed. Miss Vincent, Sashayâs lead singer, is actually a bartender at Clock-Out, which is a fun dynamic. Also, exhibiting from Olympia are the psychedelic indignants in Nudity, who satiate using elements of warped 1970s prog rock. The opening deliverer of defiance are Matriarch, repping Seattle and ripping the hardcore punk. All are easily on the âones to watchâ list. ZACH FRIMMEL
Foreigner, Whitesnake, Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience
Upon forming in 1976, Foreigner were a low-key supergroup featuring exâSpooky Tooth guitarist Mick Jones and Ian McDonaldâthe guy who did much of the weird stuff on In the Court of the Crimson King. Like their peers Kansas and Styx, Foreigner was a well-oiled pop machine masquerading as a âseriousâ rock band. Their self-titled debut remains one of the more listenable relics of the AOR era precisely because of how poppy it is. The one-two opening punch of âFeels Like the First Timeâ and the McCartney-worshipping âCold as Iceâ is masterful sequencing, but even non-hits like the woozy âStarriderâ and âThe Damage Is Doneâ are significantly meatier than your average 1970s diet-rock filler. The real star, however, is Foreignerâs erstwhile lead vocalist Lou Gramm, who, along with Steve Marriott, could be classic rockâs most underrated singer. (Circus magazine famously remarked that Gramm possessed a voice âRobert Plant might envy,â and he probably did.) MORGAN TROPER
FRIDAY-SATURDAY
ROCK/POPJackson Browne
Take easy listening to a whole new level with a two-evening set of classic rock's mellowest uncle, Jackson Browne.
SATURDAY
BLUES/COUNTRY/FOLKr
Rory Van James, Y La Bamba, Desert Fantasy
For a former professional-baseball-player-turned-musician, Rory Van James has really hit it out of the ballpark with his career switch. Enjoy the fruits of Van Jamesâs labors (which includes four months of solitude before moving here, which sounds to me like the perfect method of preparation for the Seattle Freeze), while celebrating the release of Volume 2 of his Sewn Silhouettes recording project. With Van Jamesâs lushly layered take on country-soul, Y La Bambaâs rousing eclectic folk with lyrics in English and Spanish, and Desert Fantasyâs live drums DJ set, this event will leave the city feeling a little more like the countryside by the nightâs end. SOPHIA STEPHENS
Streetlight Manifesto
Thereâs nothing wrong with liking ska. Or is that just what I tell myself to make my enjoyment of third-wave ska less shameful, as I throw on a pair of checkered pants? Skanking out of New Jersey for the past 15 years, Streetlight Manifesto are one of the genreâs heavy hitters, giving life to a scene thatâs often considered a passĂŠ novelty of the 1990s. Streetlight Manifestoâs last album, 2013âs The Hands That Thieve, broke into the Billboard Top 100, but they have yet to release anything in the last few years, partially due to public conflicts with their record label, Victory Records. KEVIN DIERS
Sublime, Rome, Lupe Fiasco, New Politics
Put on your baja and longboard down to Redmond for a Sublime reunion show (R.I.P. Bradley), with Rome, Lupe Fiasco, and New Politics.
Fungal Abyss, Eight Bells, Eye of Nix, Thrombus
No two Fungal Abyss shows are the same. Because their live performances are exactly what their name suggests, it would be impossible for the members of this eardrum-crushing, heavy, experimental jam band to duplicate their act perfectly from set to set. Plus, it would completely ruin what this project is all about. Fungal Abyss are what happens when you give members of the defunct psychedelic doom band Lesbian some magic mushrooms and basic song ideas and tell them to let loose. The result is a unique sonic experiment that canât be found within this realm of consciousness. KEVIN DIERS
Sandrider, Pink Parts, Glose
On July 20, three true titans of Northwest heaviness return with 10 more tracks of pure rock fury supplied by local noise enablers Good to Die Records. After successful albums in 2011 and 2013, plus an EP that found them hitting a triumphant high point with their crunchy cover of the Janeâs Addiction anthem âMountain Song,â Seattle-based power trio Sandrider are back with Armada. The wait has not been in vain, as the album is dosed with exactly what weâve come to expect from Sandrider: crushing riffs and soaring melodies, proving that you donât need to sacrifice any heavy for hooks. KEVIN DIERS
Seattle Punk Flyer Retrospective 79-85
Once upon a time, Seattle had a city attorney named Mark Sidran who hated fun and enacted numerous âcivility ordinances,â including a postering ban. âThe day after the ban was defeated, someone hung posters all over Capitol Hill that said âFUCK MARK SIDRANâ with the appeal decision text on it,â Chase Alvordâthe attorney who took the case pro bono and ultimately helped defeat it in 2002âsaid when I called to ask him about it. His reason for taking up the case after reading about the ban in The Stranger? âI thought it was such a basic fundamental form of expression.â This show features posters that preceded (and may have inspired) the ban from bands like Solger, U-Men, the Fartz, 10 Minute Warning, Green River, the Refuzors, Rejectors, and many others, plus music by Seattle punk stalwart DJ Kurt Bloch and beer from ValhĂśll Brewing. KATIE KURTZ
The Devil's Carnival
If you want multi-genre entertainment united by the theme of bizarreness, try this sideshow whirlwind featuring sword swallower Titano Oddfellow, Little Bear the Bearded Lady, Black Heart's Society's Conjoined Twins, apparitions from the horror musical Devil's Carnival, dancer Moria Chappell, and the wild clown-rockers Fabulous Downey Brothers (Zach Frimmel: "they display a 1980s art-rock panache and Devo-esque raucousness that verge on genius") in dance theater, drag, song, magic, and a little burlesque.
The Voidz
The first two tracks from the latest Voidz album, Virtue, show the duality at the heart of Strokes singer Julian Casablancasâs psych-rock project. Opener âLeave It in My Dreams,â with its chiming guitars and abundance of hooks, could be a Strokes outtake. Itâs followed by âQyurryus,â far and away the strangest thing to which Casablancas has put his name: a song propelled by dubstep bass wobbles and Euro-pop drums, its near-unintelligible vocals punctuated with AutoTune warbles. The Voidzâs apparent reluctance to move away from the outsize influence of their frontmanâs other band is a recurring theme, but their most interesting music happens when they do. ANDREW GOSPE
SUNDAY
HIPHOP/RAPThe Grouch & Eligh, DJ Fresh
Grouch and Eligh, two of the best-known members of LAâs Living Legends crew, have been undie-rap workhorses for what seems like forever (a quick internet check reveals it to be closer to almost two decadesâclose to forever in rap years). Back in 2014, they released a triple album (!) called Tortoise and the Crow, and if you fuck with heart-on-the-sleeve wise-guy hiphop, you can probably recite half the lyrics from memory by now, as few do it better than these guys. If youâve graduated beyond the backpack, thereâs always dubious crossover attempts like âAll These Lights,â in which perma-melancholy Eligh tries his damnedest to spit a party rhyme. Props to these dudesâ work ethic, but at a certain point rapping just to hear yourself flow gets a little staleâjust ask the sober dude at your next late-night cipher. KYLE FLECK
Animal Collective, Lonnie Holley
I have nothing against Animal Collective; they bring Syd Barrettâs lexicon into the 21st century, which somebody should do. For my money, though, the real attraction here is the opening act, Lonnie Holley, a long-running outsider artist who assembles broken landscapes out of broken toys and other detritus of the American machine. Music-wise, he intones and preaches and inveighs and challenges the audience to think, over a bed of synth presets. And while those synth presets wouldnât have much interest in themselves, they make a great launching pad. ANDREW HAMLIN
The Psychedelic Furs, X
Bands playing at the zoo have to turn down the volume, owing to local noise ordinances, so the music comes out intriguingly twisted from its norm. X owe a fair amount to country music, in the harmonies at least, so Iâm thinking theyâll pump up the country, which is good for the music, if not so much for the bandâs attitudes (oneâs a Trumpeter, and one sees left-wing conspiracies everywhere). British post-punk/new-wave group the Psychedelic Furs owe nothing to country, but Richard Butler could still hypnotize you with his rasp. And youâd get his lyrics without a lyric sheet, for once! ANDREW HAMLIN
Vacationer, Sego
The hypnotic charm of psychedelic-pop band Vacationerâs third album, MINDSET, accomplishes just that. With a slew of lo-fi textures, sparkling notes, and soothingly chill vocals from the Philadelphia group on tracks such as âOnward & Upwardâ and âSummer End,â this album is perfect for that surprisingly pleasant summertime afternoon where, in spite of the odds (and our current political climate), everything feels just right. On this tour, Vacationerâs millennial daydream gets a lively pairing with Los Angelesâbased duo Segoâs driving rhythms and attitude-fueled lyrics for what is sure to be a chill, summer-worthy lineup that still brings the heat. SOPHIA STEPHENS
