by Campfire OK Seattle's Campfire OK will be at the Crocodile on September 23rd opening for Fences CD Release Show
Shenandoah Davis
Photo by Abbey Simmons ::: Saturday September 4th at 4:30pm Shenandoah Davis plays the Bumbershoot edition of the Round with Goldfinch and Tomo Nakayma
Shabazz Palaces at Sasquatch ::: photo by Josh Lovseth
Congratulations are deserved all around this morning with the news that Sub Pop has signed local hip hop visionaries Shabazz Palaces. We love it when local support local (it’s kind of our thing here …) and we couldn’t be happier for both parties with this new partnership. I think Ishmael Butler (or The Palaceer) said it best in this morning’s press release, “And, of course, Seattle is the immeasurable muse, the backdrop, backbone, the foundation to how we all get down.”
Here are the important parts of that release and a five tracks from Shabazz via Sub Pop’s soundcloud. You can expect to hear new Shabazz out on Sub Pop sometime in 2011.
Seattle, WA— Sub Pop’s recent signing of Seattle’s ascendant hip-hop collaborative Shabazz Palaces highlights an exciting, new example of the city’s legendary and ever-evolving music community. After self-releasing 2 EPs, Of Light and Shabazz Palaces, in 2009, the group quickly gained local acclaim, especially (and most noticeably to us) here within the Sub Pop offices. The Stranger, on Shabazz Palaces: “Shabazz’s almost subliminal messages are universal: ‘Find out who you are and see it/Find out what you are and free it/Find out who you love and need it/Find out what you can and be it.’It’s a timely sentiment for Seattle hip-hop, which, after years of self-negating/hating or looking too much to the Bay Area and Brooklyn for direction, is enjoying a creative surge and homegrown industry that is—no bullshit—changing the landscape of Seattle music.” With their debut full-length expected and anticipated in 2011, Shabazz Palaces will keep busy playing shows, receiving awards and turning heads.
“I think we both have a lot of love, appreciation, respect and energy for music and for each other. Recognizing the fact that business is necessary for maximizing exposure to it, I think we mutually feel that doing business is less a ‘job’ and more an opportunity to exercise those feelings in dope ass ways. Shabazz, we bring a distinct hip-hop mentality from left to Sub Pop, which has established itself wide and deep in r&r from that same field. So, it’s going to be cool to see what gets born from rolling together. And, of course, Seattle is the immeasurable muse, the backdrop, backbone, the foundation to how we all get down. So SP feels a lot of pride around this partnering-up as well. The people, the office, the deal, it all feels super plush. So stay tuned, it’s ’bouts to be on.”—The Palaceer, Shabazz Palaces
I’m sick. Raging fever, various other unmentionable ailments directly tying me to the bathroom. Regardless, Sub Pop’s signing of Shabazz Palaces is something to celebrate.
Something about the name Male Bonding put me off from this recent Sub Pop signee. Perhaps its my increasingly lengthy tenure in San Francisco, but the sound of a band entitled Male Bonding raises my hackles, makes me think of popped collars and Chrissy Field. I shouldn’t doubt Sub Pop though, they’re a label that signs many but not in an annoying way, in a way that brings fresh faces and big stars to the table alike, and giving a Sub Pop band a listen is always at least rewarding in some way.
Male Bonding, a bunch of Brits, skirt the line between punk and new wave and hardcore in an entirely pleasant way, and though a video involving the green-screened ocean might not of been exactly my visual choice for this song ‘Weird Feelings’, it somehow works.
Check out this other, more brooding, introspective track Franklin.
No Age has a walked a strange path in the evolution of their sound. Weirdo Rippers, though widely accepted and beloved by the indy-click, was, to this melody-needing listener, near unlistenable. Nouns on the other hand, their Sub Pop follow-up, nailed the formula: one part squawky noise, one part slimy criminal melody and stir. The second album worked because there was an element I could grasp, even if the main tracks still roared with ear piercing thrash.
Now, No Age is big, the indy-verse has fully accepted them, the kids, well, they just love ‘em. Thus, what does a band, now open to the masses, do with their third album? How do they stretch their sound to retain its experimental aura, while not turning their fresh-faced young sycophants back to power-pop? Turns out No Age extends the lengths of their songs and adds long droning vocals reminiscent of, strangely, Jawbreaker. This sounds like a rebuke towards No Age’s progressive sound, but not only do I enjoy this track, I think it a suitable direction for the band to head in, bring in the new, maintain the old. ’Cause it isn’t a full-on ejection of No Age’s noise, oh no it lurks in the background defacing school buses and assaulting cops, its just a step forward, a broad turn to open their faces to a bigger, more different crowd.
Dum Dum Girls, like no other garage-pop girl rockers performing today manage to capture not only the sound of the fuzzed out ladies that preceded them, but also the sort of strong sexy that resonated from their heavily worn influences. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition, a sort of lace-net, bubbly collided with growling femininity and a white-toothed smile.
This video for “Bhang Bhang, I’m A Burnout”, awash in color noise and bright eyed beauties, fits nicely in to the idea.
Happy Birthday is one of Sub Pop’s newest band’s and it just so happens they are in town and stopping by Sonic Boom Records for a free in-store the same week Sub Pop is celebrating it’s 22nd birthday. The video above is of Happy Birthday doing their song “Subliminal Message” in the latest Insound Studio Session. After watching the whole very nicely done session, my observation is that they’ve managed to turn being fun-loving teenagers into a full-time job long after they’ve aged out of their actual teens. Now people pay to watch them have fun on stage.
But you don’t have to pay a cent to catch Happy Birthday at Sonic Boom Records’ Capitol Hill location where they’ll be doing an in-store set at 3pm on Saturday April 24th.
And while we’re talking about Sub Pop’s and Happy Birthday’s we’d be remiss not to wish the label a very happy 22nd too.
If every show sells out the way last night’s Seattle show at Neumos did for Beach House, local powerhouse Sub Pop can be said to have undoubtedly made the right investment. The band’s Sub Pop debut Teen Dream arrived in January accompanied by a blogorama of coverage, first after the initial leaking of the record in late 2009, and then during the week of the official release with sustained coverage of the videos commissioned by the band for each of their songs. That they had these atypical music video’s made by unconventional filmmakers set a different tone, and a different standard even, for what might come in the future. Not just that we should expect music video’s at all, but that they might be more than an ego trip for person making the music and instead an opportunity for someone else to inject some creativity and build another dimension to the songs.
The band have been touring hard on Teen Dream in the months since, including riding opening slots for Grizzly Bear in Europe, so I doubt they much knew or cared what day it was. I could tell they were having ‘a case of the Mondays’ though. The monitors weren’t right, which caused them to abruptly end their single “Norway,” well before it was finished. After a few more songs of missed timing and glares at the sound guy, they decided it was futile to make the sound any more right and did their best. Vocalist Victoria Legend powered through and for the most part rescued the songs but the band just never seemed to find their pocket. The curiously drunk Monday-night crowd was oblivious.
I’ve been digging through the detritus of a dead person’s life (no one of any relation or, strangely enough, even friendship) over the course of the last two weeks. It has been a dusty perusal of era after era after era long gone. We’ve found teeth, World’s Fair 1939 memorabilia, and a pair of ladies underwear I could’ve worn as a vest. Each day, covered in grime, I step in to the light of the modern day and everything seems a little too new, a little too fresh.
Amongst the many, many new ventures by Sub Pop, this little band Happy Birthday (Kyle Thomas of King Tuff’s new schtick) stands out as particularly apt to my meander through the decades. It’s new and fresh and grating, but when the song hits thirty or so seconds, all of sudden I’m standing in Mary Pini’s closet amongst Spyderknit sweaters, gold coins and the urge to spin my date in one skirt-swooping spiral.
Or maybe I’ve just been inhaling asbestos and rat fecal dust for a little too long.
This relatively new 7″ from Mark Sultan, one half of the garage-doo-wop explosion that is King Khan & The BBQ Show, sounds like the Mark Sultan you remember. It’s catchy and steeped in the sort of band-stand crooners of the mid-1950s. If it wasn’t for Sultan’s tendency to wear a turban and a gleaming tiara, you’d picture a mint green suit with emerald piping. Perhaps a bevy of bosom-y back-up singers filling in the “ooh ooh ooohs”.
Yet, somewhere on both “Hold On” and the B-side of the 7″, “I Hear A New World” there’s a dark side looming, a tinge of fuzzed-out sadness that boots the sequins and swaying hips. There’s a kernel of a doubt, psychedelic and somber, that weaves in and out, in and out, tempering Sultan’s doo-wop holler. Showing the seams where the sugary sweet might just fade.
Due to the overwhelming magic of the internet, I sort of swan-dived in to a ooey-gooey four-disc collection of pretty much ever girl group Phil Spector, murderer that he is, ever produced. It’s more than several earfuls to consume, earfuls of lost love and mean boyfriends, chocolate shakes and Walls of Sound - it is an impressive collection and I have just started to skim its whip-creamed top.
In the meanwhile, Dum Dum Girls have been spoon feeding me rock covered lollipops for a few years now, and I, and everyone else who’s ever listened to Phil Spector, can only see them as the logical progression of girl-group-gone-grunge. This track, “Jail La La” is their first single of their Sub Pop debut, and it’s thrashy and swoony and makes me want to throw back the top of my Dodge Dart and cruise the beaches with my ladies.
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