If the cornucopia of choices Bumbershoot gives you doesn’t satiate your taste for live music or if you just want to keep the party going longer, there are a couple recommended kick-off and after parties happening around Seattle.

Fellow local blogger and friend Travis Hay is hosting two official Bumbershoot parties. First up is a kick off show Friday night with a bevy of local talent, where with a five dollar raffle ticket you can enter to win a pair of tickets for each day of Bumbershoot, a Sub Pop Records prize pack, a EMP/SFM prize package and a pair of tickets to Bumbershoot for Sept. 5 that give the winner side stage access to the main stage to watch Rise Against, Hole and Weezer. Hell, I’m going to buy a ticket to see if I can watch Courtney Love from the side stage.

On Sunday Travis plays host again to two big name touring bands: Surfer Blood and Dead Confederate. (Plus another Athens’ SOTS favorite: Futurebirds.)

Drop your full name in the comments below and you’ll be eligible to win a guest list spot to Sunday’s after party courtesy of Hard Rock Cafe, Travis Hay and Sound on the Sound. We’ll choose a winner on Thursday at 12pm.

Saturday night the after party is at The Crocodile with a Bumbershoot artist taking the stage for the second time that day. In the name of community courtesy, we’re not going to come out and say who it is, but we did do the research for you.

Here are the specifics on all three nights of Bumbershoot parties:

Friday September 3rd

The High Dive - The FunOfficial Bumbershoot Kick Off Party with Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, Thee Emergency, Curtains for You, and Sol - $10

Saturday September 4th

The Crocodile - A Warp Records Recording Artist and Fresh Espresso - $17

We did the internet research for you … there is only one Warp Records artist playing Bumbershoot.

Sunday September 5th

Hard Rock Cafe - Official Bumbershoot After Party with Dead Confederate, Surfer Blood and Future Birds - 10 adv/15$ night of show

Even if we hadn’t booked this show, there is nowhere in Seattle we’d rather be this Friday than seeing Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground and The Head and The Heart at the Columbia City Theater. It promises to be a beautiful night of local music with two of our very favorite bands at one of our very favorite venues. It’s a night not to be missed. (And KEXP agrees with us …)

Thanks to our partners at Columbia City Theater, we’ve got a pair of tickets to this dream local line up! Just drop your name in the comments (with your real email so we can notify you if you win!) and we’ll chose a winner at random on Thursday at 9am PST. If you win, your name will be on the guest list with a plus one!

And because there will only be one winner, don’t forget that you can pre-purchase tickets through Brown Paper Tickets. If you don’t win, we recommend you do … this show already looks like it’s going to sell out.

Star Anna ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

It’s shocking, I know, but there’s actually other great music happening this weekend in Seattle outside of a sweaty three block radius on Capitol Hill. And none of those shows comes more highly recommended than Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs (with Daniel G. Harmann & the Trouble Starts and Ryan Purcell & the Last Round) at Columbia City Theater.

In some sort of sonic self-flagellation for missing the show, I’ve been listening to Star Anna’s latest release, The Only Thing That Matters on repeat. It’s an album I’m sad to say I overlooked when it was released locally last year, though Shane Tutmarc gave it some much deserved love on his end of the year list. It is a rocking country album full of rough and tumble heartache and snarling sweetness. There’s a dichotomy at play with the record and Star Anna herself, a strange marriage of untouchable toughness with an edge of danger and startling soul-barring, heart-exposing honesty in her words and her voice. There is such a technical proficiency to the album and such confidence radiating from Star Anna when she sings, it can at times seem aloof — but then her voice cracks with emotion as she begs you to hold on and she seems as fragile, as tough. There is something delightfully complex about Star Anna, something that makes you want to listen more loudly, more closely and just, more.

Locally, if you’re a fan of The Maldives more forceful songs and Zoe Muth’s skillful songwriting with a nod to classic country, you’ll love Star Anna. Nationally, Star Anna often draws comparisons to Lucinda Williams and Neko Case. That is to say, this is Americana at its best.

Courtesy of our friends at Columbia City Theater, we’re giving away a pair of tickets to see Star Anna and Her Laughing Dogs this Friday, July 23rd. Drop a comment below by Friday July 23rd at 10:30 and we’ll pick a winner at random to have their name on the list plus one to see Star Anna at Columbia City Theater.

April Smith & The Great Picture Show ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

In the process of writing Sound on the Sound, I’ve discovered I am a total sucker for the following: pedal steel guitar, modern bands that employ a fiddle and accordion player, and bawdy female singers who sound as if they’re from another era, most especially when they’re backed by a kick-ass band and a stand-up bass.

MP3: “Colors” by April Smith & The Great Picture Show from Songs for a Sinking Ship

The latter explains my enthusiasm for April Smith & the Great Picture Show, whose rollicking retro circus will be pulling into town at the Sunset next Wednesday. When we saw her open for Fanfarlo back in February, she had the crowd in the palm of her hand and attempting to swing dance … at the Crocodile. The crowd might have come for Fanfarlo’s sweet orchestral pop, but it was April’s swinging set and her rich and rowdy belting that stole the show.

April doesn’t just sing, she performs — instantly transforming any stage she’s on into an impromptu cabaret. She radiates cheeky confidence, controlling the crowd with a wink and coy smile, more spunk than grace and truly infectious charm. With her tutu skirts and throwback sound April could easily venture into a realm of “too cutsie,” but while the material toes that line, her feistiness never allows it to cross.

April Smith and The Great Picture Show are playing the Sunset Tavern June 23rd (Wednesday) and we’re giving away a pair of tickets.

Drop a comment below by Monday June 21st at 5pm and we’ll pick a winner at random to have their name on the list plus one. And if you do win, be sure to bring your dancing shoes!

If you want to be transported for a good cause, promise us you’ll drop a few dollars in the donation jar and enter to win free tickets to see The Album Leaf, Kinski and Baths this Saturday as part of Noise for the Needy Festival. It’s going to be a night of surreal sonic landscapes and avant atmosphere. If you want to spend a night in your head, as well as a night out … this is the show for you.

The Album Leaf - Falling From The Sun by subpop

Courtesy of Noise for the Needy we’ve got 5 pairs of tickets to give away to Saturday’s sweet show for a good cause. Drop your name in the comments  (by 11am on Friday) and we’ll choose the first commenter and  4 winners at random to have their name on the list plus one.

Only one thing could make a line-up composed almost solely of our favorite local bands even better … if they were in it for a good cause.

And Friday night’s epic local line-up at the Underground Events Center in Belltown for Noise for the Needy is just that. Sharing the stage to benefit Teen Feed will be: The Maldives, Whalebones, Virgin Islands, The Magic Mirrors, Hallways  and more.

If you’re not familiar with these bands or Noise for the Needy, this is a perfect show to acquainted with all of them. There’s a reason that Noise for the Needy is one of our favorite events year-after-year: for four or five nights some of the best bands in the country and the city come together for once-in-a-year-bills for charity. This year the fest out did themselves with headliners and the real conundrum is which show you’ll be going out nearly every night this week to help out Teen Feed.

Courtesy of Noise for the Needy we’ve got 5 pairs of tickets to give away to Friday’s epic show for a good cause. Drop your name in the comments by Thursday at Noon and we’ll choose the first commenter and 4 winners at random to have their name on the list plus one. (Use your real email so we can notify winners … and of course, we’ll keep it hidden like a secret from everyone else.) But, since this is a show for charity, you have to promise us to drop a dollar or two in the donation bucket … or to make it out as a paying guest for another show.

Tuesday March 2nd gives Seattle an opportunity to get a good gander at two members of what I’ll term the cream-of-the-crop of the newest cohort of local bands. Locally in just the last year Noah Gundersen has dominated the Q Cafe, Neumos, the Triple Door stage, and most recently headlined the Crocodile. The other rising name on this bill is a name that you probably already know from our coverage of them over the years and their recent connection with Barsuk: the Globes. To our minds both names, by way of their music, are likely to be known far and wide by the time 2010 comes to a close.

Gundersen, who is a name that is still relatively new to us, seems to channel something other than typical singer-songwriter fare. Along with his sister Abby and his band The Courage, Gundersen has taken up where Pedro the Lion left off, writing thoughtful, philosophically complicated songs that come from a young and faithful point-of-view while still being strikingly accessible to those who might not count themselves so religious. “Jesus Jesus” from his most recent EP release Saints & Liars is the song that’s really caught a our ears here at Sound on the Sound (as well as the ears of a host of others who told us to look into him), and is just one of many reasons that we think Gundersen is going to be playing to larger and larger audiences:

Courtesy of Chop Suey we’ve got 2 spots on the list to give away to one lucky winner for Tuesday night’s all-ages show. Drop your name and email (which remains hidden to the public) in the comments and we’ll randomly choose a winner on Monday at noon to have their name “plus one” on the guest list for this sure to be popular affair.

Make sure you and your friends get in to this rare all ages night at Chop Suey by grabbing tickets ahead of time via TicketWeb for $8.

Surfer Blood at Chop Suey ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

Want to get an early line on those sure to be in high-damand ticket’s for Monday’s free Crocodile show that aren’t even available yet? Here’s how:

Esurance is currently running a ticket giveaway via Facebook. All people have to do is tell us what their favorite song would be if they were Sasquatch, himself. Our favorite three answers will win a pair of tickets to the Launch Party on 2/15. Winners will be announced tomorrow morning at 9am. All the details can be found at www.facebook.com/esurance.

Do Make Say Think - “In Mind” Music Video from Parallel Minds on Vimeo.

This Friday, Toronto’s finest purveyors of expansive instrumental post-rock Do Make Say Think are visiting Chop Suey and we’ve got a pair of tickets to give to a lucky reader.

Late last year Do Make Say Think released the Other Truths LP, a four song effort where each of the songs clock in at an average of 10 minutes. Each song is an exploration that elevates the included elements of rock into a larger musical tapestry, and plenty of quiet moments of meditation to balance the inevitable minutes of sonic updraft. If the Dirty Three were actually an eight-piece rock orchestra instead of three-piece, this is what I would imagine it to sound like. Moody. Overwhelming. Symphonically Massive. Utterly unique.

We’re picking a winner for this contest at noon on Thursday February 4th. All you’ve got to do is drop a comment saying you want those tickets and we’ll choose a random winner to get a pair, courtesy of Chop Suey.

To ensure you’re let in at the door, tickets are $12 adv. via TicketWeb. It’ll be $14 at the door night-of. Also on Friday night’s bill are Years (an un-google-able band name if there ever was one), and The Happiness Project.

Black Whales at Bumbershoot 2009 ::: Photo by Abbey Simmons

As you can tell we’ve been easing slowly into the new year with regard to blog content, but that should be resolved shortly. We’ve been putting the finishing touches on our last list of 2009, the top Northwest Releases of 2009. Though you’ll see the list soon enough, one band that we should mention that definitely did make our top 25 of the year was Black Whales (@blackwhales) and their Origins EP.

Here’s what I wrote to sum up the record in a paragraph:

19. Origins by Black Whales on Mt. Fuji Records
On the eve of the release of the Black Whales Origins EP I wrote, “The seven songs on the Origins EP keenly reflect [a] philosophy of trying to have fun and creating something new…” This long EP is a soundtrack for leaving the past behind, hitting the open road and making the most of life’s exploration. Creating sunny beach pop that isn’t content to be superficial or afraid to face the ugly facts, the gentlemen of the Black Whales look to the horizon toward which we all endlessly tread and see unbounded possibility. Provided you’re you’re not only willing, but expect to “Roll With the Punches” that is.

This Friday January 8th they’ll be at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard, along with Grand Hallway (@grandhallway), another band who was in contention for our top 25, and Amateur Radio Operator. Black Whales have the headliner spot, and courtesy of them, we’re giving away three pairs of tickets for the show. Drop your name and email (which remains hidden to the public) in the comments and we’ll choose three winners to have their name “plus one” on the guestlist. I’m declaring right now that the first commenter is an automatic winner by virtue of eagerness. Well pick two other winners randomly on Thursday, January 7th at noon PST.

To ensure your place, tickets are $8 at TicketWeb.