The Comet, Seattle’s venerable dive bar, has recently become a viable venue for live, local music. Last Saturday’s bill (February 3) featured stellar Seattle-area bands - The Mona Reels, Spanish for 100, The Sea Navy, and Dept of Energy; which paired for a bizarre, if not beautiful night out.

Now any of you who’ve spent any time at The Comet, know it’s not exactly a sit-down, contemplative type of bar. It’s endearingly rough around the edges and raucous. Yet Olympia trio, The Mona Reels made a compelling argument for the softer side of The Comet. With lush harmonies, layered with truly angelic back up vocals by the Scheif sisters, and witty lyrics- the Mona Reels seduced the Comet into quiet. And it was quite a lovely site to behold.

Following The Mona Reels was Spanish for 100, a band that is decidedly more The Comet’s (traditional) speed. Yep, these Seattle gents play pure guitar driven rock. While the Comet occasionally errs with sound quality, this Saturday was spot on and it highlighted perfectly the nuances of Spanish for 100’s sound. The band rocked a hard set, in a style that struck me as more NorthEast than NorthWest:  2 loud guitars, a driving bass, unfussy instrumentation, and smoky-sugared vocals. That being said, I will completely contradict myself, by noting a lot of the guitar and bass lines had me thinking: “wow, this is very modest-mousey.” The band is coming out with a new album Say What You Want to Say To Me in March, with a CD release show at Jules Mae’s Saloon on March 10th. Sound on the Sound will definitely be there.

The evenings third act, The Sea Navy, proved the old adage to be true - third time (or act as it may be) really was a charm. After playing these unsigned wunder-band’s Oh These Troubled Times incessantly, I could hardly contain my excitement of seeing them live for the first time in such an intimate venue. Prior to the show we had the pleasure of meeting the band; frontman (Jay) seemed rattled with anticipation, worrying aloud “I hope we don’t dissapoint you guys.”  It would seem the frontman is just as his music: genuine and without pretense. Jay started the set debuting a new song solo, “second guessing second chances,” another illustration of his understated acoustic styling and cheekily-clever titled tunes. (Oh These Troubled Times features gems like “Sir Pants” and ”Super Power Syndrome.”) After the first few songs, you could physically see the nerves and worry melt away on Jay. Leaving the bespeckled polite gent behind and revealing a man at home on the mic, an on-the-verge-of-something-huge sensation. The stellar set included the majority of Oh These Troubled Times, as well as debuting two new songs… each song resulting in an even larger cheer than the one before.

And then, amidst all this garage-pop-wonderfulness, something very strange happened. The stage (and by that I mean the floor of the bar) was rushed by a mob of drunk, bumping and grinding, peroxide blondes and their meathead male counterparts. These girls are wearing outfits that Paris Hilton would be proud of and they are dancing like Christina in her XTina days. These people had obviously stumbled into the wrong bar. While hipsters and Comet regulars look at each other in utter confusion, Jay is trying to keep a straight face and remember the words to his new song, “Not My First Rodeo.” His admirable attempts are thwarted when the blond ring leader does a particularly shall we say “naughty?” dance move and screams “You Guys Rock!”– about two inches from his face. Just about then they notice the cameras from KEXP, from Seattle-PowerPop, and heck, even SOTS. While deciding not to indulge their America’s Next Top Model fantasy, we did have to take a few photos for posterity.

The Sea Navy ended their set with a personal favorite and once they get signed, what I’m certain will be their single, “Divorced, Beheaded, Died,” which I’m pleased to say sounds just as good live as it does on the album.  That’s about when Sound on the Sound decided to call it a night (sorry Dept of Energy) because nothing was going to top what had just transpired, musically or comically.