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In case you were wondering whether Dog Jaw were as aggressive as their name might suggest, the answer is a resounding yes. The opening track on the Olympia punk outfit's album, Slow to Build, begins with what sounds like dogs howling and whimpering, before guitars slowly begin to emerge, and
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Roots music revivalists have begun to get a bad rap recently - especially thanks to the influx of banjo-strumming posers like Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers - but the Littlest Birds more than pass the smell test. Coming from the mountain town of Bishop, Calif., this cello-and-banjo duo does
Music
Sometimes I think about all of the music I've heard in my life. Hundreds upon hundreds of hours of sounds drifting into my head - albums, radio, live performances, passing someone on the sidewalk as they hum a tune to themselves. It's almost incomprehensible how much music I've been actively
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Describing them musically, Fox and the Law are easy to undersell. Basically, they're just a really good rock band. Genre-wise, they lean in a garage rock direction, but there's little in the way of the typical Nuggets or punk influences that usually characterize modern garage rock acts. As a four-piece,
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Pop punk made it to all the way to France, as it turns out. Xtramedium, hailing from the French Riviera, have mastered all of the little emo flourishes and all the punky switches from contemplative riffing to spiteful rave-ups. Thrown into the mix is a healthy dose of lively folk
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Mugen Hoso are a two-piece rock band from Japan. They sound like the perfect mix of the Clash and the Ramones. They do not sing in English, and their harmonies are outlandishly good. Needless to say, they are fucking awesome. Good? Fine, I'll say some more. Seen in concert, Mugen
Music
I had seen live music before, of course: "Weird Al" Yankovic from the nosebleeds at the Puyallup Fair; suffering through a migraine at a Jethro Tull concert; Paul Revere and the Raiders (I think), once more at the fair. But I had never been blown away by a live performance
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The past couple of years have been exciting ones for Lemolo. Last year, in particular, saw the release of the Seattle duo's debut LP, The Kaleidoscope - an appropriate title, evocative as it is of the band's dreamy, summery shimmer. Capitalizing on the steam that Lemolo had been building up,
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Hailing from Portland, Muscle and Marrow is the project of singer and guitarist Kira Clark. I want to emphasize those words: singer and guitarist. Muscle and Marrow is entirely concerned with the dance and interplay between Clark's tremulous voice and the fuzzy tones emitted from her guitar. The gauzy guitar
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The opening chords of "The Things I Say," by Sam Vicari, give me chills of recognition. With its gently chugging guitars and sugary sweet vocals, it is instantly reminiscent of decades of power pop, its melody even stretching back to the two-minute guitar heaven of early Beatles. Vicari is clearly
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Beginning her career at open mics in Boston, Paula Poundstone soon moved to San Francisco, which in the late '70s and into the '80s, was the hub for freethinking and unique comedians. People like Dana Gould, Jake Johannsen and Bobcat Goldthwait, among others, would hone their craft at places such
Music
The past couple of years have been exciting ones for Lemolo. Last year, in particular, saw the release of the Seattle duo's debut LP, The Kaleidoscope - an appropriate title, evocative as it is of the band's dreamy, summery shimmer. Capitalizing on the steam that Lemolo had been building up,
Arts
Within the first few minutes of her latest album, I Heart Jokes: Paula Tells Them in Boston, Paula Poundstone lays out the groundwork for everything she's all about, comedically: she talks about the difficulties in raising her adopted children and her animals, she touches on her OCD, and, most notably,
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An almost too obvious entry point for the kind of satirical Americana of Shotgun Kitchen would be their spiritual forefather, John Prine. Just as Prine had a tendency to almost undermine salient points in his songs by making stoned-out, hallucinatory jokes about chasing rainbows down the street and nonchalantly tossing
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I suppose it's fitting that the Mormon Trannys will be gracing Olympia with their presence on a Sunday. I also suppose there's no way for me to really know if they're actually scorned former members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, like they claim, but what is utterly apparent
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The Raven and the Writing Desk are about confounding expectations. A six-piece outfit from Denver, the Raven and the Writing Desk's music initially conjures up connections to bands like DeVotchKa (another literary allusion) and Beirut - these purveyors of gypsy-and-otherwise-worldly musical strains. It's notable that the heart of the Raven
Music
In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter poses this riddle: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Alice asks for the answer, at which point the Hatter admits that he has no clue what the answer is. Yes, readers said to Carroll, ad nauseam, but what really is the
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The similarities between Bloodbirds' album, Psychic Surgery, and the early Flaming Lips album, Telepathic Surgery, don't stop at the names. Like the work of the early Flaming Lips, Bloodbirds create psychedelic slash-and-burn screeds, with little dashes here and there of the kind of charming silliness in the lyrics that would
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The concept of the Broadway Center's Cathedral series is simplistic to the point of perfection: get some beautiful-sounding artists to perform in beautiful spaces designed to bounce around beautiful sounds. These are not raucous events, but rather contemplative experiences that take exploit churches' natural abilities to heighten and highlight negative
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On Happy Noose's self-titled debut, the charged punk instrumentation in concert with frontman Ryan Scott's deep, morose vocals went a long way toward connecting musical dots in the listeners' minds: clearly, Happy Noose are a band that takes its cues from early '80s UK New Wave, early
