Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you should already know what our Show of The Week is …. Sound on the Sound’s First Showcase, this Saturday at The Blue Moon!

The line up is now featuring Wah-Wah Exit Wound, Sparrows, and Junkface. Each one of Sound on the Sound’s delightful writers have invited a band to play a set and it is sure to be a spectacular spectacle, not to be missed.

Music starts at 10pm, the celebrating starts a wee bit earlier!

See you all Saturday!!!

When I first became acquainted with the Sparrows a few months ago at the Comet I was bowled over by their smooth confidence. Lead singer Alex’s stage demeanor reminded me alot of the National’s Matt Berninger, a person bursting at the seams with emotional energy that’ realized as this sort of personal interpretive dance, as though his body and not just his voice is an instrument to be used to express that moment in the song.

When we were first thinking about bands to invite when setting up this showcase, this was the first band to come to my mind. Go check them out on their myspace. They’ve only got one song up, but just that one should be enough to convince you to come out this weekend.

Sound on the Sound Northwest Showcase featuring Junkface, The Femurs, The Sparrows
10pm, $Free
The Blue Moon, Seattle
July 14, 2007

More on the remaining bands The Femurs and Junkface in the coming days.

Mark your calendar’s now! and start counting down the days with me….

Sound on the Sound is hosting it’s first (of hopefully many many) show’s at our favorite dive, The Blue Moon on July 14th 2007. We will be hosting the magnificent Femurs, Sparrows, and  (portland’s) Junkface.

If you caught Junkface’s opening set for Hopscotch Boys at the Blue Moon awhile back, you know these guys are a force to be reckoned with and not to be missed.

This is the only time I will ever encourage you not to go see The Hands or Thee Emergency (who are sadly playing the same night at the Sunset)

Come and Rock with Sound on the Sound at The Blue Moon!!

More to come, including a kick ass poster by Jon Smith (winner of the perviest moustache and cobra poster artist extraordinaire.)

Spook The Horse, Patient Patient, Lonely Forest, The Sparrows
The Comet Tavern, Seattle
April 21, 2007 

Shows like this are why I love being a music blogger. I only caught the tail end of a Patient Patient set when they were opening for Cursive (in a lunchroom on UW’s campus), and at that same show managed to snag a free cd of theirs that was flying through the air, literally. Their album was well done, so I thought I would give their full show a chance, and what better place than The Comet? I didn’t know any of the other bands beyond a recommendation (that I had yet to make good on) for the Sparrows, so I was pretty much going into this show blind. I’m happy to say I came out of the show highly impressed by all the acts, and not a little drunk thanks to a drink ticket Patient Patient kindly passed me (I love Manny’s).

The earlier recommendation I had received for The Sparrows turned out to be a wise one. This Bellingham band, fronted by lead singer Alex who was charismatic and energetic, blew me away. I was enthralled by their laid back and generally smooth rock star deameanor, especially in contrast to Alex’s adventurous and riveting stage presence as the consummate frontman. Their myspace songs have a distinctly garage and low tech feel to them, but live they have alot more edge, making them a well matched opener for what was to come. (To my mind though by the end of the night, any one of the bands could have been the headliner based on the maturity of their sound. But a developed fan base though matters to bookers, so I think that is what probably determined how this lineup shook out.) Definitely a new band to keep my eye on.

Closely following the Sparrows was The Lonely Forest, a three peice, two of which were under twenty-one and so were only allowed in the bar during their performance. This Anacortes band’s only guitar was a bass after losing a guitarist to college, so lead singer John Van Deusen has picked it up on the black-and-white’s to great effect. His voice has a confident and clean quality that belies the age of this young singer. Their piano centered songs remind me heavily of UK singer songwriter Aqualung (of ‘Strange and Beautiful’ fame) and Van Deusen’s voice of Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz with a darker and more melodic quality to it, but The Lonely Forest definitely isn’t taking any songwriting tips from those guys. They prefaced a number of their songs as being about the end of the universe or the moment before getting sucked into a black hole or a dystopic future or something disparing like that, definitely not ‘Mr. Jones’ if you know what I mean. But even if the topics were less than bubblegum, their banter was delivered with a mischevious smile that gave away just how determined these guys were to have fun (and were in fact in the process of having).  Read the rest of this entry »