Russell Brand and Katy Perry.
A famous professional athlete and a woman millions of other men would like to get to know intimately.
Will and Jada.
Ike and Tina Turner.
Unfortunately for my tender heart, many Seattle bands are breaking up as well. Spurm is not the only one who will be breaking up this year. As for the rest of the bands, I’ll let their passion play reveal itself on its own terms. I hate when people tell me the ending to a movie I’ve never seen.
Is it unprofessional to put a sad emoticon in the title of a blog post? Because I would like to right now. I’d like to spell out the title of this post in “smiley face” tears.
In case you don’t know, Spurm played one of the best sets I have seen by a band since I first set foot in Seattle in September of 2007. You can read about their glorious 2011 Capital Hill Block Party set at Cha-Cha here. I was losing my mind during their performance. If I were more familiar with the band at the time, I could have written at least five thousand words painting you a picture of their quirky, charismatic greatness. Sure, I’ve heard the name Spurm time and again living in this overcast city. You’ve probably their name a myriad amount of times as well.
I mean, it’s Spurm. It sounds like Sperm.
Gentle readers, sounds aren’t enough. You need to feel Spurm. You need it all over your face. I want to see it stain your jeans. I want you to fashion it into jewelry. Don’t forget to brush your teeth.
You might think this is getting weird. I’m going to one-up you and say this shit already was weird. There’s a certain greatness in being easily misunderstood. Musical postcards. Funny-looking costumes. What band below the age of 30 has even heard of covers The Who? Being weird is not a novelty for Spurm, oh no. Their strangeness is transcendent.
Hold on a second, let me roll on the ground and try to explain to you that I wrote these lyrics.
These are the lyrics.
I really need more lyrics.
Gosh darnit Spurm! I’m going to miss you!
WAIT, let us not forget what other bands are sending them off in style:
Uzi Rash have played the Black Lodge a couple of times and they are from Oakland. What does that mean? That means they are tougher than you. They play the kind of tunes that’ll prove it.
The Unnatural Helpers wrote my favorite song in 2010 (Sunshine/Pretty Girls). If they don’t play this song tonight, I will use weaponry and fighting tactics I have learned from the game Skyrim and kill everyone in the audience.
Wimps are the kind of band that will put your hand in a warm bucket of water when you’re sleeping so that you may soil yourself. They’re secret botanists. Shhhhh.
One more country tune to end the week with a slow drawl of heartbreak and misery. Skeets McDonald “I’d Hate To Be Him” is lounge-country. You pull up to the local saloon after a long day at work, or maybe you’ve had knock-down drag-out with your partner, or maybe the wearies of the world are just hanging off your shoulders. You saddle up to the bar, the gleam of a neon Lone Star sign reflecting off the buffed bar. You order up a whiskey and spark your first cigarette and this song slides its way out of the jukebox and sure, it doesn’t make you feel better, but it makes you feel like somewhere out there, someone else is sharing your pain.
I dragged this heart-stopper off the amazing The Best of Country Western culled from my new favorite sight, Uncle Gil’s Rockin’ Archives. Head on over, lose yourself.
Let’s just keep it coming country this week. I just recently discovered, thanks to the amazing website Uncle Gil, The Best of Country Western which is a treasure chest of gleaming country gold and four of the five Daily Choices will be culled from that amazing album or at least from an artist discovered on that album. Today it’s George Morgan, another sad-voiced crooner, and his track “All Right”. The song sticks out because it emphasizes the gallows humor so many of this early country folk were skilled at. Oh sure, the dogs been stolen, your wife is diddling the mailman and the paperboy, and you’re about to bet your last ten dollars on no-win poker - but you’re also drunk as a skunk and having a damn good time doing so. The abyss looms close, but you’re stepping off the edge with a shit-eating grin stitched to your mug.
George Morgan’s “All Right” or is about the crumbling of a marriage with one man trying to hold on to the institution and one woman trying to break it down to divorce town. The chorus, “All right, I’ll sign the papers” is such a twang-heavy resignation of the truth, that I break in to a grin every time I hear it. George Morgan is a sad man, but there’s a cigarette and a big, frosty glass of whiskey waiting somewhere.
I can honestly say that featuring a Dutch lutist on The Daily Choices is a first for us. I’m not usually drawn to songs that feature descriptions like “Baroque spirituals” or “experimental” but the fact that it was a collaboration between filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (a favorite of mine) and the aforementioned lutist Jozef Van Wissem peaked my interest. I imagined, with cover and the looooong title, that the music would be stark and emotionless, bordering on some sort of scorched Earth folk, but “Concerning The Entrance In To Eternity” is actually jaw-droppingly beautiful. It’s simple, the barely plucked strings of a lute hovering above a gentle, sonic wall, and creates images of crystalline lakes and overcast summer days. There’s a touch of New Age spirituality lurking in the fold, but the music is so harmoniously constructed that on a rare occasion I can forgive that. I had no idea that Jarmusch was a musician in any sense, and have no idea whatsoever what he’s added to the stew, but I’ll notch it up as another victory from the multi-talented artist.
December of 2010 was my first proper introduction to both Pickwick and Fly Moon Royalty, playing the same night at Columbia City Theater. Just a year on now, both bands are resizing their aspirations for bigger stages and with good reason. Both were announced for this year’s Sasquatch!, so with blackout dates surrounding that and the inevitable crush of summer festival season recruiting the hottest bands, we’re not likely to see a Seattle club show from either of these groups till late 2012.
We’ve got two tickets for the show to give to a random commenter who really wants them. We’ll choose a winner Friday at 12 noon.
Snag tickets ahead of time online for $15 from STG Presents. For this inaugural “Little Big Show,” part of a series of shows where ticket sales go to benefit local arts organizations, 100% of this night’s proceeds are going to Arts Corps.
Remember when we said we’d share our list of 25 other unmissable records the first week of January? Whoops. Thing is, the first month of this new year, we were still listening to and falling in (and out) of love with records from 2011. Discovering albums we should’ve shared months ago and finding out what sounded good in summer, didn’t survive snowmageddon. We added and whittled and debated and listened and when it comes down to these 24 albums, all released in 2011 by bands from the Pacific Northwest, we loved.
Here’s what you won’t find on here: records we wrote about in 2010 (The Head and The Heart, Beat Connection, Joseph Giant, Baltic Cousins), just okay releases from bands we’ve loved before, collections of 7’’s made into best of EPs, EPs in general and plenty of records that you loved with your whole heart and we just, didn’t. But, after hundreds and hundreds of hours of listening and seeing these bands live, slightly fewer spent talking about the albums amongst ourselves, we’re confident these are 24 records you’d be remiss to miss from 2011.
Here’s what you will find on here: bands from Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and Boise. Psychedelic symphonies. Menacing metal. Four-Eyed Soul. Modern R&B. Party Punk. Folk confessionals. Hip shaking hip hop. These albums are self-released, funded by fans and put out by labels big and small. They are debuts and albums that defied sophomore slumps and career defining work. Albums that have been loudly lauded and others who’ve been mostly ignored. Its a sample of what makes being a music lover in the Pacific Northwest right now so exciting, there’s a little something for everyone and we hope you find something you love too.
________________________
AgesandAges - All Right You Restless (Knitting Factory)
Agesandages fills up a room. With no fewer than seven people adding harmony to the airtight, country-funk rock that spins off Alright You Restless, the debut record enthralled me with the desperate joy that permeates its entirety. Playing with the bog of loneliness and defeat, and inviting the world into that dark fold to find comfort in each other, it’s music that offers salve in stomps and hope in runaway choruses. (Kathleen)
“I’m sick and tired of soul music looking so clean and proper! Cause my soul… my soul… my soul is just a little big greasy!” This is how Allen Stone introduces himself to the crowd from the stage. Obviously steeped in tradition but not married to its dictates, Stone’s four-eyed soul is unrepentant in both its influences and its willingness to disregard them entirely. Repping the Northwest he’s more than likely on stage in a flannel or Sonics jersey instead of any Detroit mandated button-up uniform like most of his current peers. This un-buttoned attitude extends to the dynamic mixture of straight R&B ballads and kinetic pop and funk on display in this record. If nothing else, just like the live show, Allen Stone represents Stone being unapologetically himself. (Excerpted from Josh’s full October review.)
Case Studies - The World Is Just a Void to Fill the Space (Sacred Bones Records)
It’s plausible to say that every music fan in Seattle cried a tiny tear when Jessie Lortz and Kimberly Morrison decided to end their tenure as The Dutchess and The Duke a few years back. Yet, if any and all knew that Lortz would take the new found freedom and put an album as poetic and gorgeous as Case Studies’ The World Is Just a Void to Fill the Space, I wonder, how sad would we all of been?
I discovered Case Studies during a two week period where I was living out of a hotel room in Dubuque, Iowa. My girlfriend was in the midst of a two-week intensive dog-training course and I’d signed out to drive out there and then “focus on my writing” for two weeks in a thrifty Day’s Inn a few blocks from the Mississippi River. To say the least, the smell of old cigarettes and scratchy linens inspired nothing in me and I found myself grabbing my keys and drifting through the Midwest in a chrome-green Honda Element. The Midwest is a strange, lonely place for a city dweller, and with no destination in mind I’d pick a spot on the map an aimlessly cruise towards it. It was on one of these roads with the green blur of farmlands speeding by in the background, the thin snake of the Mississippi my only landmark, that I not only discovered Case Studies but fell wildly in love with it.
It starts with “You Folded Up My Blanket Like We Were Already Lovers,” a deceptively upbeat story about love in a car, on the stairs, in a garden. The road will numb you, and my musical selections weren’t cracking the shell, but “You Folded Up My Blanket…” with it’s beautifully simple lyrics slipped in and I played it on repeat, memorizing every word like a smitten teenager. From there “My Silver Hand” squeezed in to the gap, Lortz’s deep, whiskey-soaked voice rising above the simple violin and guitar, the words full of heartbreak and the need for redemption just peppering my emotional core. Somewhere between Dubuque and Hazel Green, Wisconsin, I fell wholeheartedly in love with the album as a whole. I pulled over the car and sat and stared out in to an endless stretch of green and felt lonely and a bit sad and completely won over by everything Lortz was crooning, every simple beat that stretched out from the door behind me. (Noah)
I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on why or how, but every moment on No Witch seems suffused with joy. Maybe it’s the way Derek Fudesco’s guitar notes dance like afternoon sunlight on the living room wall, or maybe it’s the honest, folksy feel of the foot-stomping energy. Whatever the case, No Witch has become my go-to cheerup album, my foolproof impetus for dancing around the kitchen with gleeful abandon. It’s not that there’s no darkness - “My mind wakes me up every night sir, see devils in my backyard,” Quirk sings on “Black Leaf,” but the bleak and the bright are bundled up together in little boxes of hope. Weather moves in dark patterns, but as Quirk espouses in “All Land Crabs and Divinity Ghosts,” “It’s too big of a world to give up now.” (Brittney)
When Macklemore said “My city’s filthy,” this wasn’t quite what he meant, but as its cover art indicates, True Romance listeners are in for a low-down dirty ride. This album is a tribute to sybarite pleasures of all kinds, from the warm burn of whiskey in your stomach to the red memory of teeth marks on skin, from the hip-thrust of the drums to the thrust of, well, other things. Conveniently, it’s also the perfect soundtrack for the unbridled enjoyment of these recreations. (Brittney)
I recently turned thirty. Not long after, I found myself looking back on the 20s version of me and thinking, “What an ass.” 28-year-old Mangan (who, incidentally, is incredibly polite and charming) seems to be going through a similar process a couple of years early, and has done us all the favor of turning it into a delightful album. With endearing honesty and trademark wit, Mangan crafts carefully textured odes and confessionals that reward with every listen. (Brittney)
In 1995, Madison, Wisconson band Garbage catapulted Shirley Manson into the universes of teenage girls across America. Delivering the gospel of bad attitude and copious eyeshadow made palatable by a fresh and irresistible mix of industrial, electronic, and pop music, Manson led a generation of girls in a catchy, apocalyptic chorus of “I came to shut you up / I came to drag you down / I came around to tear your little world apart.”
Fast-forward: 2012 seems an appropriate year for another apocalyptic lady to come to music town, and this time she’s brought a general. Laura Smith and Andrew Braun are the front end of pop group Rococode, and they’re here to prove that everything’s bigger (and catchier) in Vancouver. Their debut album Guns, Sex, & Glory marries epic subject matter to singalong pop.
Smith sets a sweeping scene in “Empire,” the album’s standout track. “I’m gonna love you like an empire,” she declares. “Build you up and bring the flames higher / Keep it burning like a prairie fire.” Layered under the lyrics are irresistibly catchy musical phrases, making “Empire” the singalong of the year. Rococode draws voraciously from all forms of pop, bringing in elements of powerpop, dance, and even 1960s girl-group sounds to create a sound that is both familiar and startlingly fresh.
But as notable as Rococode’s epic scale is their restraint. As ambitious as Arcade Fire but (despite the name) without their fussiness, Rococode builds their edifices with care, going big but staying in control. “Weapon” augments volume with layered voices and bass drum, while “Blood” adds tension and drama with a well-timed bass chord. Even the metal-sounding title track is actually a slow-building, subtle ballad.
With Tegan and Sara band members Johnny Andrews and Shaun Huberts behind them, Smith and Braun (who also contributes vocals) are, on Guns, Sex, & Glory, forging a bold new path through Canadian pop music, guns blazing and glory ahead.
____
Billy Walker is my kind of country crooner. “Matamoros”, a 1964 hit that played perfectly to Walker’s silky, smooth tenor, is the tale of love lost on the high plains. It’s a big Western soap opera with gunslingers and casinos and broken hearts. Walker was known for these sort of lilting tales of The West and his life, to a certain degree mirrored this. As a young performer he wore a Lone Ranger style face mask and was deemed the Travellin’ Texan. Later on in his career he was called back home urgently and was offered, but declined a ticket, on the flight that ended up crashing and killing Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins and two others. He died in 2006 when his car overturned on the highway. File this one next to Ray Price, Lefty Frizell, Patsy Cline, Porter Wagoner and Terri Clark.
Deep Sea Diver has a new record on the docket this month, and their just released single “You Go Running” was one of the songs that bowled me over during an opening set at the Neptune last December. Lead singer Jessica Dobson’s attitude escapes from her fingers on guitar as much as through her voice, and this lead single from the new record History Speaks is the full package: a modern pop melody bedded by a insatiable groove, Dobson’s electric guitar free to emulate a steel drum rhythm half the time and shred lasers the other half. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a song quite like it. The groove grips me.
Though other bands Dobson has been recruited into in might be mentioned, as this single hints and the nine tracks from History Speaks shows, Dobson and the rest of her band are pursuing their own brand of rock n’ roll that’s more than deserving of being mentioned on its own merit. And even if I did mention those names, listening to this latest batch of songs would probably shatter your preconceived notions anyway.
Saturday February 24th at Columbia City Theater Deep Sea Diver will be having a CD Release Party for History Speaks with Daniel G Harmann & The Trouble Starts and The Soft Hills in support. $8 advanced at BPT.
Stonewall Jackson is one of the reasons why honky-tonk country music exists to this day. Alongside Ray Price, Lefty Frizzell and Hank Williams, Mr. Jackson helped define the hard-driving sound that became so popular in the 50s and 60s. I stumbled across Mr. Jackson on some patched together best of country tape, and was blown away by the smooth twang of his voice. “Waterloo”, Jackson’s song about a slew of personal downfalls, is one of the great unsung country tunes. A huge, almost military drum beat pushes the song forward as Jackson croons about Napoleon and the inevitable arrival of all of our own “personal Waterloos.” It’s dark, and silly and subtly fucked up just how I like my country.
Jackson was a hit machine, landing 35 hits in a fourteen year span, and eventually becoming a staple of the Grand Ole Opry. When he was released, unceremoniously, in 2006, he sued the company for “agism” after GOE manager Pete Fisher told him he was “too old, and too country.” Well, Mr. Fisher, I hope Mr. Jackson sued your fucking pants off.
There’s a great “Best of Stonewall Jackson” album floating out there somewhere. It’s rife, rife with awesome, twang-heavy tracks.
The Doe Bay Sessions capture some of the Northwest's most talented emerging and established bands going acoustic in a quintessentially Cascadian setting:
The files posted on this blog are for sampling purposes only. We post a track, and if you like it, go out and buy an album or a concert ticket. That's how it works. If you represent the copyright holder on this material and believe a file has been posted in violation of your copyright and you would like a file removed notify us here.
We Talk About New and Local Music!
If you would like to send a CD for review or tell us about your band contact us here.
North of Northwest columnist, Contributing Photographer, Live Reviewer
Tyler Kalberg (Seattle)
Videographer
Kathleen Tarrant(Seattle)
Album Reviewer, Contributing Writer
Sound on the Sound is an unpaid work of passion that equates to countless hours of effort by a team of editors, writers and media geeks. (And plenty of real money spent too.) If we've done something over the years to enrich your musical enjoyment, please considering dropping a donation in the hat.
Digg This!
::
Share
::
Delicious
