Wipe the star-spangled streamers from your sweaty face and get into these upcoming post-Fourth of July shows, hand-picked by our critics from our music calendar. We’ve compiled options that range from New Zealand guitarist Gate to local rap group the Physics, and from the Northwest Heavy Fest to TUF FEST, which spotlights female/nonbinary/trans members of the electronic-music community. Enjoy these 22 shows, and know that there’s a hell of a lot more where that came from.
JULY 5
Ghost Lit Kingdom, Screens, 627
Ghost Lit Kingdom: anthemic, as in heartland-of-America-style (but LA-based), exhortations to live despite rejection, even self-rejection, with orchestral chimes. I know a few cynical angry old men who’ll hate it, but frankly, and especially after Orlando, we need exhortations to live—and, yes, exhortations to reject self-loathing. West Seattle band Screens come in with thick electronics and at least one song about Otter Pops, plus female rapping to taste. I couldn’t find any 627 online but, folks, if you’re out there, write in and let us know what you’re about. The Lo-Fi’s about the size of six telephone booths (for those of you who remember telephone booths), but that’s part of the charm. You swap sweat with your neighbors and you don’t even have to worry about your place or mine. ANDREW HAMLIN
Greg Adams and East Bay Soul
Greg Adams exhibits his musical signatures with East Bay Soul, showcasing legendary arrangements that made the Tower Of Power (of which he was a founding member) horn section a stand-alone entity. Adams continues to make his mark on today’s music landscape, especially with regards to jazz, soul, and funk. (Through July 7)
JULY 6
HEALTH, Yumi Zouma, Cuff Lynx
Back in the late ’00s, HEALTH were one of the most exhilarating groups in LA’s overcrowded rock scene. At 2010’s Bumbershoot, they put on a fantastic show (“a vital blast of apocalyptic weirdness,” as my review on Line Out put it), but I lost track of their recording career after 2009’s bombastic industrial-rock stunner Get Color. Just now catching up with 2015’s Death Magic, it’s apparent HEALTH have changed. Here they sound like a more butch Pet Shop Boys or a less angsty Nine Inch Nails, though flashes of their past brutality do occasionally surface. Narcotized melody has usurped galvanic noise as the dominant force in HEALTH’s music. Some may view this as progress, others as a misguided march toward “maturity.” DAVE SEGAL
JULY 7
Deck’d Out #3: Hanssen, Secret School, DJ D’Nelski
Tonight local electronic-music label Hush Hush takes over the Monkey Loft. Headed by KEXP radio personality Alex Ruder (aka DJ D’Nelski), Hush Hush has been a prolific font of beautiful post-club music for sensitive dreamers. This show serves as the release party for veteran Seattle producer Hanssen’s second album, Transit. Renowned for his role in the formidable left-field house duo Jacob London with Dave Pezzner, Hanssen here makes a logical follow-up to his 2014 debut full-length, Seven Years Week. On Transit, he excels at creating lushly melodic and airily rhythmic tracks that are optimal for peering wistfully over vast vistas of natural beauty. House music rarely sounds this serene and celestial. Secret School (aka Seattle’s Andrew Sutherland) combines those trademark wispy, chill Hush Hush atmospheres with a lithe, bustling funkiness. “Glassy” even flips that famous break beat from the Bar-Kays’ “Holy Ghost” to brilliant effect. This guy has programming prowess for days (and nights). DAVE SEGAL
Golden Gardens, Goodbye Heart, Science and the Beat
Golden Gardens are in the business of conjuring—washing you from your natural state and manipulating this world into an atmospheric darkness of alchemical confusion and ensorcellment. The issue herein is their ability to convince you that what you’re hearing from them is more worthy than the world you were in prior to their influence. In moments of weightlessness, Golden Gardens can evoke the purest of Julee Cruise vocal intentions, with the strident reach of a more orchestral Sisters of Mercy, or Chelsea Wolfe. But rather than adults cornering the market of their subgenre, Golden Gardens feel more like Victorian schoolchildren playing at the macabre. KIM SELLING
Northwest Heavy Fest
A husband-wife boutique of bombast, regional label Devil’s Child Records has developed a national rep as a go-to source for Pacific Northwest bands that seemingly take their musical cues from the heft and density of Mount Rainier. At the two-day Northwest Heavy Fest, Devil’s Child will host a loud, lovingly curated survey of nearly a dozen bands it’s worked with, including stoner metal battering ram Mother Crone, interstellar instrumentalists X Suns, boogie rocker badasses Mos Generator, and the “grade school math metal” of the awesomely named Teepee Creeper, among others. Devil’s Child prides itself on crafting gorgeous looking artisanal vinyl, meaning the only thing as heavy as the sounds this weekend will be the crate of records plenty of longhairs will be carting home. JASON BRACELIN
JULY 8
Dixie Chicks
Revered, best-selling pop-country legends and general badasses the Dixie Chicks play the White River Amphitheater with Anderson East and Josh Herbert.
Ducktails with The Lavender Flu
Sadly, headliners Ducktails—Real Estate member Matt Mondanile and cohorts—have regressed from upper-echelon chillwave dream weavers to innocuously pleasant indie rockers. So the main reason to hit Barboza tonight is the Lavender Flu, a Portland group led by Chris Gunn. Their newish 30-song double LP, Heavy Air, features appearances by underground luminaries from Hospitals, the Hunches, Eat Skull, and Monopoly Child Star Searchers. It’s one of those sprawling, stylistically diverse rock opuses that recall Game Theory’s Lolita Nation and Olivia Tremor Control’s Dusk at Cubist Castle in its ambition and skewed songwriting brilliance. And like those records, it feels like Heavy Air is going to improve with age. Further touchstones include long-forgotten accidental pop bands like Supreme Dicks, with occasional glints of the charmed chaos heard on Royal Trux’s Twin Infinitives. A cracked back-porch beauty and a nonchalantly disorienting logic pervade Heavy Air, its tunes cohering with a spindly dignity. Lavender Flu are something else again. DAVE SEGAL
The Dickies, The Queers, Acid Teeth
So you love the Ramones but missed the boat on any chance of seeing them. What’s the next best thing? The Queers! No, they’re not technically a Ramones tribute band, but this New Hampshire four-piece plays a style of pogo-friendly pop punk so derivative of that classic sound that they might as well be. LA-based punk veterans the Dickies are always a blast, so don’t skip out early before they (let’s hope) serenade you with their revved up covers of the Moody Blues and the Isley Brothers. Combined, these two bands have more than 74 years of touring behind them, so you can bet they know how to play the hell out of those three chords. KEVIN DIERS
Alice in Chains
In this town especially, talking about Alice in Chains just sets a certain subset of people off. And you can’t blame them; pretty much every single from 1992’s excellent Dirt album was played into the ground. Punk purists call Jerry Cantrell and company sellouts, especially after the 2002 passing of original vocalist Layne Staley. But screw that nonsense. Alice in Chains are a reptilian band, one that’s survived multiple extinction events—they used to be a hair-metal band—and keeps recording great rock music. New-ish singer William DuVall is a more than worthy replacement, and his own bluesy swagger made 2009’s Black Gives Way to Blue a worthy successor to their ’90s oeuvre. JOSEPH SCHAFER
Mark Lanegan with Sean Wheeler
Mark Lanegan, with a voice as gravelly and powerful as anyone to ever touch the alt-rock charts, could have parlayed his grunge-era success into a lucrative career on the mainstream metal circuit, croaking aggressive lyrics over chugging riffs right along side Phil Anselmo and dozens of others. And though he registered a few heavy numbers with Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age, his solo career is characterized by a much subtler shade of darkness. Since his 1990 solo debut, The Winding Sheet, Lanegan has chased demons through stripped-down acoustic and understated band arrangements, always leaving his voice at the fore, bare to tell twisted stories of love and death like a less traditional, more haunted Tom Waits. His most recent proper release, 2014’s Phantom Radio, is another strangely beautiful collection of stinging lyrics crooned through cavernous folk and oddball electronic instrumentals that only add layers to his distinctive style. TODD HAMM
A Benefit For Jonathan Moore: The Physics, Jake One, Stay Hi Brothas
You haven’t actually experienced a Seattle summer unless you’ve spent a hazy, faded evening rolling down Lake Washington Boulevard listening to the Physics, specifically “Seward Park,” from 2011’s Love Is a Business. The Physics have been one of the town’s best rap groups for nearly a decade—they toy with different styles on each release, yet their sound is always as smooth and compelling as a lover’s whisper. (When, on 2015’s “Sleeping Alone,” Thig Natural rhymes playing Jah Rule with whipping out his tool, he somehow manages to keep it grown and sexy.) The soulfulnesss of Justo’s production seems effortless, but that belies the many forces at work in the music—the city’s variegations of green and gray, its diverse people and musicians. Instrumentation—keyboards, trumpet, vocals—distinguishes the Physics’ sound from most other hiphop acts, and tonight they perform with a full live band. Seattle mainstays Jake One and Stay Hi Brothas are also on the bill. It’s all a benefit to help out Jonathan Moore, a man whose contributions to Seattle hiphop could never be overstated. Let them show you what it is in the city where we live. ANGELA GARBES
Steven Tyler: Out On A Limb
Rock and roll royalty Steven Tyler brings the stories of his music and career to the McCaw stage, with Loving Mary, his backing band, and full visuals, in an effort to illustrate an entire life lived in pursuit of icon status.
JULY 9
TUF FEST
The first annual TUF FEST is an all-day/all-night extravaganza spotlighting musical performances, visual art installations, workshops, and artist discussions by female/non-binary/trans members of the electronic-music community. Powered by the local TUF collective, the event features live sets by Bolivian-born abstract beat scientist Elysia Crampton, Seattle hiphop phenom DoNormaal, Oakland synth-builder and avant-garde electronic producer Kaori Suzuki, former Soft Metals minimal-synth musician/vocalist Patricia Hall, and others. At the TUF FEST ’Til Dawn afterhours party, German DJ Lena Willikens and Discwoman cofounder UMFANG lead you down some strange techno and electro wormholes. In a field dominated by male-centric bills, TUF FEST is a spring-loaded step into a fresh future. DAVE SEGAL
Swarm+Stew: Honoring Stuart Dempster On His 80th Birthday
In honor of trombonist, composer, and multi-media performer Stuart Dempster, Swarm+Stew, composed and facilitated by Neal Kosaly-Meyer, will take place two days after Dempster’s 80 birthday, and is comprised of his friends, students, and colleagues (or co-conspirators), including Ione, Loren Dempster, Neal Kosaly-Meyer, Pauline Oliveros, and Greg Powers. The performed score accounts for spontaneity in elocution and encourages deep listening in each and every moment.
Deerhoof, Skating Polly, Scarves
You’re either on Satomi Matsuzaki’s wavelength or you’re not. It’s not that the Deerhoof bassist can’t sing, it’s that she goes where her voice leads her (a strategy she shares with avant-pop improvisers like Yoko Ono and Damo Suzuki). Japanese segues into English into… French? Esperanto? On the Bay Area quartet’s kaleidoscopic new album, The Magic, she shares vocal duties with Greg Saunier, John Dieterich, and Ed Rodriguez, whose punk energy complements her more outré tendencies. Jazz funk, glam rock, and angular proto-punk converge as if they were always meant to go together (three of the songs were written for HBO’s recently canceled Vinyl). If Cibo Matto and the Stooges cut a record together in the New Mexican desert, as Deerhoof did, it just might resemble this one. KATHY FENNESSY
The Meices, Guns of Nevada, The Navins
The web tells me the Meices are back together. This is very good news for at least one very important reason. The Meices, you see, had one of the greatest songs you’ve probably never heard. It’s called “Don’t Let the Soap Run Out,” and it’s about calling mom because you’re broke, something about a bomb, a skinhead Jesus (not one of those racist skinhead Jesuses), and the chorus, which is the title, and only the title, and which seems in six words, six notes, to cover all aspiration, all desperation, everything that could possibly sit at stake in life. I have no idea if any of their other songs are anywhere near that good. But armed with “Don’t Let the Soap Run Out” is armed with faith. ANDREW HAMLIN
Too $hort
“Hey man, I got the new Too $hort,” said one of my college homies, circa the second Bush administration. I probably should not use the word “homies”; for the record, we were all white, and all at a hippie college, to boot. I tried some later Too $hort like I tried some earlier Too $hort. As if anyone is deeply surprised that he’s still rapping about bitches, hos, his ineffable status as one muthafucking pimp, being drunk, Playboy Mansion fantasies, huge penis fantasies, and XXX fantasies—to him they probably aren’t fantasies. That’s what Hugh Hefner discovered, right? You get enough people to buy into your fantasy, and you get to live it. Which is okay. But I’m thinking somebody else got something more transcendental out of a TR-808. ANDREW HAMLIN
No Nonsense 004: Barac, Arapu
No Nonsense is a relatively new and very necessary night that focuses on minimal techno and microhouse—styles that fell out of favor nearly a decade ago but, for this die-hard aficionado, they still always resonate. Seriously, if you want a trippy, efficient way to get out of your mind and into your body, these genres get the job done with no negative side effects. Tonight No Nonsense goes huge with two of Romania’s foremost producer/DJs, Barac and Arapu. Championed by DJs such as Ricardo Villalobos and Rhadoo, Arapu favors an understated, eerie and oddly funky style of outsider techno that sounds especially crucial around 4 a.m. Barac’s productions are slightly more conventional than his countryman’s, but in terms of these Bucharest badasses, that’s still far from mainstream innocuousness. Barac’s narcotically nocturnal tracks burrow deeply into your cortex and pelvis; he’s a master scientist of subtle dance-floor stimulation. DAVE SEGAL
KHU.EEX with Tim Alexander and Skerik, Dubchamp
KHU.EEX is an experimental funk group that includes bassist Preston Singletary, Galactic drummer Stanton Moore, and saxophonist Skerik, who together fuse elements of funk, jazz, and Native American Tlingit singing and storytelling. It is also the brainchild of recently deceased Bernie Worrell, the pioneering funk and soul keyboardist of Funkadelic and Talking Heads. Gather to honor Bernie’s legacy with musicians who truly knew him and appreciated his work.
JULY 10
Buckethead
One might surmise that the reason guitar warlock/chicken fetishist Buckethead sports a featureless white mask when he performs is because he prefers to be seen as a blank slate upon which just about any musical impulse can be projected. In terms of artistic whimsy, Buckethead (real name: Brian Carroll) is as indulgent as a drunk at an open bar, his mile-long list of collaborators spanning free-range experimentalists Praxis, Japanese noise-jazz freakazoid Shin Terai, actor/musician Viggo Mortensen, rockers Guns N’ Roses, and dozens more. In late 2012, Buckethead took a break from playing live to begin self-issuing a torrent of solo releases. He dropped 118 albums last year alone, a pace of one every three days. Now he’s back on the road, which means it might take him a whole week to crank out a new record. JASON BRACELIN
Gate, Gabie Strong, Dialing In, Christopher Reid Moore
New Zealand guitar demiurge Michael Morley has earned reverence in the rock underground for his work with Dead C and Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos. His solo output as Gate—which dates back to 1989—typically pitches dense, slate-gray guitar dirges slowly skyward, filigreed with his occasional woebegone moaning. Few have managed to create such amorphous yet gripping and anomic improvisations as Morley. However, on Gate’s 2016 LP Saturday Night Fever, Morley unleashes dormant disco impulses and twists the sybaritic genre into a fearsome parody of itself. Or is he sincere? Doesn’t matter. This mutant strain of disco—festooned as it is with scathing guitar riffs reminiscent of peak Hawkwind or Groundhogs—has avid legs. California musician Gabie Strong generates transcendentally scouring drones that sound like the engine hum of some monstrous vehicle from a bleak future. Dialing In—the seldom-seen/-heard recording project of Seattle’s Reita Piecuch—deals in scrupulously collaged field recordings, samples, and electronic manipulations. The resultant drone-heavy pieces sound like perpetually eroding transmissions from ancient lost worlds, unbearably tragic and beautiful laments from forgotten civilizations. DAVE SEGAL
