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MONDAY
Green Milk from the Planet Orange, This Blinding Light, Spacebag
It's been about a dozen years since we've heard from Japan's Green Milk from the Planet Orange, so it's a pleasant surprise that they've returned to the live circuit. Mid-'00s releases like City Calls Revolution and He's Crying “Look” showed that they could space out with the tense meditativeness of early Pink Floyd or scorch cochleas with the demonic intensity of long-winded kraut-rockers like Amon Düül II and Guru Guru. GMFTPO love marathon-length songs and radically morphing dynamics, so bring your most robust attention span and get ready to expand your mind to proportions not usually recommended for a Monday night. DAVE SEGAL
Sgt. Pepper's Sing-Along
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has become a boomer shibboleth and a fixture in every greatest-albums-of-all-time list. Despite all that, the Beatles' 1967 LP is still a great record, albeit not without flaws (“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” and “When I'm Sixty-Four” represent near nadirs for Lennon and McCartney, respectively; the maudlin OD of “She's Leaving Home”; Ringo's voice). But the highs are towering, indeed: “A Day in the Life” redefined drama and epicness in pop, the title track and its reprise have incredible breakbeats, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” raised the bar for psych-pop, and “Within You Without You” took Indian-music dilettantism to sublime heights. So it will be fun as hell to sing along to Chris Friel Orchestra's re-creations, especially if Stranger editor Sean Nelson shows up (he was born to sing “Lovely Rita”). This event whets the appetite for Mark Morris Dance Group's Pepperland performances at the Moore February 16 to 18. DAVE SEGAL
TUESDAY
An Impromptu Evening with Joseph Keckler, Ahamefule J. Oluo, Kevin Buster, and Jason Cressey
Multi-talented singer and writer Joseph Keckler will perform a live set of his original arias, monologues, and haunting ballads. Stranger Genius and prolific musician Ahamefule Oluo will open the show, with support from Kevin Buster and Jason Cressey.
TUESDAY & THURSDAY
Spontaneous Combustion New Music Festival
Classical music isn’t a genre with terribly deep roots in DIY culture. Composers old and new rely on wealthy benefactors and grants to fund their work, and putting on a concert or festival usually requires a fair amount of institutional support from foundations, donors, or sponsors. That’s just one reason why the upcoming Spontaneous Combustion New Music Festival is such a standout on this year’s classical music calendar: The entire event was conceived, booked, organized, and funded by one person, musician/composer Scott Anthony Shell. All the concerts for the festival’s Seattle stop will be audacious, with performers tackling modern works from composers such as Lou Harrison, György Ligeti, and Laura Kaminsky. It’s exactly the mix of forward-thinking sounds and ideas that Shell was hoping to bring to these events, even if he can’t do all the shows he’d originally planned. DAVE SEGAL
WEDNESDAY
Obscenely Obscure
Alright, this one's for the capital-n Nerds of the music world. DJs Average Rooms (Norm Chambers), Dad (Eli Anderson), and Veins (The Stranger's own Dave Segal) have dug real deep into the wild world of library music (a.k.a. production music) to present for y'all an evening of the "scariest, funkiest, catchiest, and craziest tracks you’ve never heard before... until now." Aubrey Nehring will be providing the surrealistic visuals to cap it all off.
Soultanz, Cosmos, Bad News Botanists, Juliette
Two guys from somewhere right here who like grabbing old soul tunes, sampling said soul, pushing the samples around so they trip over each other’s feet and give each other bloody noses, underneath lyrics that tell it like they see it. You need to listen to Soultanz three or four times to get the wryness and dryness and rightness of the lyrics, but that’s a compliment. Imagine Steely Dan without the sinister pedophilic strain, and you’ll be on the right track. So it’s okay that the samples smash. Soultanz deploy contrast as healthy-greens roughage. ANDREW HAMLIN
The Wombats, Future Feats, Nation of Language
Fast-paced English rockers the Wombats are back on top with their latest album Glitterbug. They'll be touring through the US later this year with Weezer and Pixies, but for this stop they're the real headliners, with Blaenavon and Future Feats as bill support.
THURSDAY
Booker T. Jones
This show should be mandatory for the entire PacNW, ’cause Mr. Booker T. Jones is a bona-fide heavy! He was THE understated, always cool, conservative, and concise Hammond player for the Stax house band, Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Y’all might recognize their classic, "Green Onions”—a song that, in under three minutes, perfectly distills the moment when rock and roll and R&B met. Jones’s musical reach can’t be overstated. Anyway, I bet he’ll play “Green Onions,” along with his many well-loved Stax trax—so yeah, you should be there! MIKE NIPPER
CAGE, Grayskul, Diveyede, Pryor Prism, What Have May, Lucid, DJ Av
Middletown, New York, rapper Cage recently tweeted, “Remember when music was an escape from reality?” This may be the best way to understand the nihilist’s rhyme book that is Cage’s catalog. He spent his early career gleefully offending the unprepared, with both gruesome horror fiction and the tortured, abusive reality of his childhood that is probably responsible for much of his escapism. In the late 1990s to mid-2000s, he, along with El-P and Aesop Rock, brought listeners into the underground oddball rap layer. After a quick detour into crossover pop/rock-infused rap with Depart from Me, he went back to full “don’t give a fuck” on 2013’s Kill the Architect. TODD HAMM
Customs: DJ Lag
Westerners are only recently coming around to the thriving regional subgenre of gqom (pronounced “gom,” but with an initial click), a type of urban dance music from South Africa. DJ Lag is one of the style’s most visible exponents, and the intricate polyrhythms of footwork (Jlin fans, take note), the gritty intensity of grime, and samples lifted from hiphop all figure into his club-friendly style. Crowds from his native Durban to London to Berlin’s Berghain club have responded with abandon to Lag’s kinetic sets. Here’s hoping that buttoned-up Seattle is ready to let loose. ANDREW GOSPE
Kyle Craft, The Shivas, Ghost Foot
How is it even possible to be as unbelievably catchy and ebullient as Kyle Craft? And how is it that the instant some people open their mouths or play a few notes on a slapped back piano you’re suddenly sucked up into a sweet, sad tornado of Badfinger, Emitt Rhodes, Harry Nilsson, Shoes, Velvet Crush, et al? And what happened to the days when you could see a different proper power pop band every night of the week in Seattle? Don’t answer. I know what happened to those days. SEAN NELSON
Miranda Lambert, Jon Pardi, Turnpike Troubadours
Vocal powerhouse and multi-CMA winner Miranda Lambert will bring some country cool to Tacoma on her Livin' Like Hippies Tour with Jon Pardi and Turnpike Troubadours.
Stay Happy: Toya B, Dadabass, Remember Face, Sendai Mike
After a nine-month hiatus, Stay Happy is back for an all-night market of local artists and vendors with live sets from locally beloved DJs and producers Toya B, Dadabass, Remember Face, and Sendai Mike. All the art will be under $30.
THURSDAY-SATURDAY
Rachmaninov Symphony No. 3
This concert will start with a frothy, springy burst of energy with Lili Boulanger's "D'un matin de printemps," keep the energy going with Elgar's tumultuous (and extremely challenging) violin concerto, and then swoon into full-blown nostalgia with Rachmaninov’s 3rd (and final) symphony. Bring a date. RICH SMITH
THURSDAY-SUNDAY
Tamara Saulwick: Endings
Australian performance artist Tamara Saulwick uses "portable turntables, reel-to-reel tape players, and live performance" to talk about the cyclical nature of death and grief. Standing on a dark stage, Krapp's Last Tape–style, Saulwick interviews prerecorded people as if they were ghosts, plays songs, and troubles the notion of linear time with weird audio collages and sound design. This has all the trappings of one of those gorgeous, sad, poignant performances that you don't expect to love but then absolutely do, and then three years later, you recall some heartbreaking detail and find yourself crying into your scarf on a train platform in Düsseldorf, but in a good way. RICH SMITH
FRIDAY
Flor, Handsome Ghost
Having racked up opening gigs for star-studded headliners like Halsey, COIN, and Colony House, Flor continue to improve upon their R&B-drenched electro-pop perfect for summer parties with their 2017 release come out. you're hiding.
Haunted Horses, Glaare, Fearing, Social Security
Don’t be fooled by their playful band name—Haunted Horses have the nightmarish aura of a dissonant horror-film soundtrack and the percussive force of a stampeding herd of Clydesdales. As longtime staples in Seattle’s DIY scene, the guitar-and-drums duo honed their blend of punk’s energy, death-rock’s morbid swagger, and industrial music’s broken tones into a cavalcade of pulsating and propulsive gloom reminiscent of cult goth-punks the VSS. After a short-lived breakup in 2016, Haunted Horses returned with last year’s excellent Come EP, which further accentuates their filthy and hallucinatory throb. BRIAN COOK
Joshua Bell in Recital
Renowned violinist Joshua Bell will perform some of his favorite works accumulated throughout his career spanning more than 30 years as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and conductor.
Kate Olson, Noel Brass Jr., Corey J Brewer
With heavy-duty respect to Wally Shoup, Seattle needs more than one free-jazz saxophone maven, and thanks to Kate Olson, we’ve got another genuine article! A resident since 2010, she’s gigged with Skerik, Elvis Costello, Stuart Dempster, and other worthy artists, but she stands perfectly well on her own. Quite literally alone in many cases, amassing layers of echo and reverb around a solo sax, listening as tendrils chase, interlace, and occasionally fight with one another. But Olson is not afraid to get noisy and rude! Excelsior. ANDREW HAMLIN
Supermoon, Tough Age, Lisa Prank
Supermoon are four cool Vancouver, BC, ladies who craft low-key yet suspenseful rock songs that have roots in 1980s UK indie-pop—surely deriving inspiration from things happening before the band members were born. Nevertheless, Supermoon wear their influences lightly, and their frictionless, crystalline tunes insinuate their way into your mind and heart with muted effervescence. It's hard to make this sort of understated approach sound interesting, so respect to Supermoon for their consistent goodness. Toronto's Tough Age rock with a bit more force than Supermoon, like a Canadian Feelies. Which means Tough Age are wonderful. DAVE SEGAL
SATURDAY
Antonio Sanchez: Birdman Live
Regardless of one’s opinion on Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 film Birdman, it was unusually inventive for a best picture Oscar winner. Much was made of how it was filmed in a single continuous shot, but Antonio Sanchez’s score is just as essential. A jazz drummer, Sanchez improvised to the film, and then edited and layered the recordings. The brusque, clattering score is untraditional, but the way Sanchez’s drums punctuate and play off of the action makes it hard to imagine anything else working as well. Here, he’ll play the music to a screening of the film. ANDREW GOSPE
Dave East, Guests
Repping East Harlem, rapper Dave East has shown up on XXL's 2016 Freshman Class and been signed to Def Jam Recordings in part due to his attention-getting 2014 mixtape Black Rose. He'll perform tracks from that and newer works tonight with additional guests.
Drive-By Truckers, Lilly Hiatt
Mad props to Drive-By Truckers for making an opera out of Southern-fried rock, and for backing up Booker T. Jones (playing at Triple Door two nights earlier). The Truckers’ latest album, American Band, finds the flag at what looks like, from the cover, half-mast. They love their country, but they don’t like what they see—and what they see is Big Orange dissolving into the amber waves of grain like toxic waste, until we just plain take him for granted and stop talking about the poison. Or at least take it for granted. And they’re American mad about that. ANDREW HAMLIN
Higher Brothers
Chengdu’s Higher Brothers are China’s biggest-profile rap group. They dab, wear Supreme, and rap over trap beats just like most young American famous rappers, but they aren’t lyrically bustin’ any joogs, totin’ any sticks, or sippin' any mud—the affect is Migos, the content Macklemore. Asian hiphop has been poised to go worldwide ever since Korean MC Keith Ape blew off the doors with 2015’s “It G Ma”—but the cultural conversation at the heart of all this is still fraught. On one side there is Asian rappers with dreads or ones calling themselves “Rich Chigga,” and on the other side there is Black American rappers’ rampant fetishization of Asian women, unrelenting anime references, and, occasionally, freely flying slurs. So, hiphop once presumed that young whites bumping Ice-T would end racism here—we saw how that worked out. Will it be mutually assured exploitation or a chance to grow? LARRY MIZELL JR.
Jessica Lea Mayfield, Sun Seeker
It isn't in Jessica Lea Mayfield’s nature to make a gloomy record. Her unfussy style, in tandem with her lightly twang-inflected singing, is just too relaxed for that, but the lyrics on her fourth full-length, Sorry Is Gone, tell a different story, as she grapples with issues of trauma and trust. On "Soaked Through," the album's darkest-just-before-the-dawn moment, she details her experience with domestic abuse. She wanted to leave, he wouldn't let her, and so she stayed. But not forever, as the title track attests. "I deserve to occupy this space," she declares, a disarmingly simple statement of hard-wrought independence. KATHY FENNESSY
Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepsen
Katy Perry has so many issues, I don’t even know where to start. Should I begin with her rampant cultural appropriation and textbook white entitlement, or perhaps her bizarre proclamations of color-by-numbers rebellion against the very system that pays her bills, or simply remind everybody of that time Missy Elliott and a guy in a shark suit ripped the dance floor out from under her Super Bowl set? She is all over the place, and her music, the one thing she’s supposed to be able to do, shows that mightily—it’s as if she and her production team threw everything at the wall and planned on recording what stuck, only to watch it all slump to the ground in a wet heap. Perry’s 2017 album, Witness, is a perfect example of this free-for-all free fall, desperately slashing through cliché after cliché, each track set to overblown symphonic warbles or disjointed trap beats ill-fitted for her earnest attempts at domming each ballad and banger alike. If you have to go to this show, go early—the real pop star here is opener Carly Rae Jepsen, who, for some reason, is not headlining her own arena tour. KIM SELLING
Shelby Earl, Sean Nelson
There’s something ethereal yet earthy about the vocals of Seattle singer-songwriter Shelby Earl—they can be delicate and sultry or given to powerfully piping serenades. Her sound is easygoing, melodious folk rock flavored with elements of dusty Old West Americana, urgent driving indie-rock, and even a bit of gospel-tinged soul. I’m reminded of Carole King, not because they sound anything alike, but because they have a similar effortlessness to their music while infusing it with something indescribably their own. This “Songs for Singing” performance by Earl—who is fresh off releasing her third full-length, The Man Who Made Himself a Name—finds her performing a stripped-down set list in American Songbook style, accompanied by Billy Brush on piano and the Passenger String Quartet. Harvey Danger alum and elder statesman of fine quality Seattle rock ’n’ roll (and Stranger editor-at-large) Sean Nelson opens. LEILANI POLK
A Slice of the Good Life with Mary Lambert
Singer-songwriter Mary Lambert, a two-time Grammy nominee, will perform at Pizza Klatch's Gayla to support safe and positive school environments for LGBTQ+ youth.
Webdriver Torso, Bloom Offering, The Social Stomach, Scuzz Nun
Unique neo-industrial rock band Webdriver Torso will bring their dark, surging electro vibes to the Central District, with local support from Stranger-beloved nihilistic dance music project Bloom Offering, the Social Stomach, and Scuzz Nun.
Wiscon, Del Vox, Sir Coyler
I swear, if Slim’s don’t always deliver some of the best local heat, and tonight’s sweat fest shall include Del Vox, a cool group that plays solid early-1970s radio rock and roll; Sir Coyler, who lay down some high-energy garage/rock ’n’ roll not unlike what was happening in the late 1990s; and Emerald City darlings Wiscon, whose new-wave raves I can’t rave about enough! For serious, it’s hard not to hear, see, well… to simply KNOW THEY EXIST IN OUR UNIVERSE without emoji hearts popping out of my eyes at the thought. MIKE NIPPER
SUNDAY
The Original Wailers, Al Anderson
Okay, the reference point is the Jamaican Wailers, not the Fabulous Wailers from underrated Tacoma. And the band isn’t anybody who was in the original Wailers (one has to be wary of the fine print). Al Anderson is originally from New York City, but this doesn’t bother me too much. (Bob Marley once lived in Delaware, no joke.) Reluctant as I am to credit a reggae band for “simply” being able to move a crowd, I concede that moving a crowd isn’t actually all that simple—and, fuck, man, these are trying times. Move whatever you can. ANDREW HAMLIN
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