Music
Looking at the Facebook page for Levels, the only information they offer is that they are a "Seattle-based band." The end. Clicking on to listen to their album, it's easy to see why they don't feel the need to elaborate on who they are or what they do. From the
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With their song, "Theme From Cheers," Titus Andronicus took a desire for alcohol as an escape from the pain of everyday living and turned it into one of the great anthemic rallying cries of 2010. Patrick Stickle's impassioned plea to "give me a Guinness, give me a Keystone Light, give
Music
With their song, "Theme From Cheers," Titus Andronicus took a desire for alcohol as an escape from the pain of everyday living and turned it into one of the great anthemic rallying cries of 2010. Patrick Stickle's impassioned plea to "give me a Guinness, give me a Keystone Light, give
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A few years ago, I wrote about a band called Mr. Frederick - a band that I called "indescribable." It was a project from a guy called Justin Stimson and it blended seemingly incompatible elements like rap-rock, folk, prog and chamber pop. It was a complex soup, and it inexplicably
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Week of Wonders describe their music as "tropical punk," which I suppose is as good a place to start as anywhere. What do they mean when they say this? Upon first listening, the lo-fi guitars and reverb-laden vocals call to mind any of many psychedelic pop revivalists, but then that
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There's a kind of gauzy, depressive Americana that began spreading around in the '90s, spearheaded by the likes of Bill Callahan and Lambchop - these masters and practitioners of the slow-burning, baritone-voiced folk music that reveled in cynical humor as much as poignantly expressive dirges. The Super 8 are instantly
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As I've said before, the hunt for nostalgia in contemporary music has been both a blessing and a curse, as bands have found and emulated long-forgotten artists and influences to varying degrees of success. At its worst, this kind of emulation comes across as the pandering output of those who
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From the first, striding chords and skittering drums on album opener, "It Was Disco and It's Over," the West succeed in evoking a dozen beloved influences - from newly deified type like LCD Soundsystem to time-tested gods like New Order. Clearly, the members of the West have an ear for
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It's been a pleasure over the past while to watch as RowHouse grew and changed and inevitably found its feet. Fronted by Alex Tapia - previously of Bayonet - RowHouse has finally settled itself into a comfortable groove as a two-piece. Manning the drums are Gary Kawamura, of the jazz
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When you build your act and your music around theatricality, you quickly realize after making a few recordings that there is eventually no place to go but bigger and bigger. More hooks, more color, more eccentricity. Sabrina Chap has backed herself against this wall, but she continues to imbue her
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The first time I saw Hands In, it was in a basement in South Tacoma. All I knew about what I was going to see was that it was a one-man band from Portland. In practice, Hands Is made up of one guy, a series of pre-programmed beats and melodies,
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The formula of "loud-quiet-loud," as formalized by the Pixies and popularized by bands like Nirvana, is a deceptively simple, yet frequently engrossing, way of assembling songs. These frantic bursts of noise that encapsulate stretches of gentle reflection - it's a hell of a way to demand attention from a listener.
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With all of these new bands turning their eyes backward in time, it becomes something of a wash to find unique voices amongst the nostalgia. For Sadie and the Blue-Eyed Devils - an act that specializes in reviving the sounds of Dust Bowl-era music - the charm comes from the
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Having just heard the name of the band, Party Mountain, what kind of music would you imagine it plays? I bet you'd be pretty close. Craggy, shambolic rock that lends itself perfectly to the swilling of vast quantities of beer just about sums it up. Though the band has only
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Gems will be releasing their new 12", Tall Mountain, on Saturday. While they sound good on record, the best way to take in Gems is to see the band live. Made up of two DJs and two drummers, it manages to pull off the neat trick of the two-drummer band
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EMA, aka Erika Anderson of defunct psych-folk outfit Gowns, is all about contradictions. She's lo-fi and blown-out, folk-minded but tentatively danceable, ethereal and explosively percussive. The reductive way to describe her music would be to say that it's experimental, but, well, dammit everything's experimental now. The advent of the Internet
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For fans of Bruce Springsteen, the Replacements and the Pogues, their latter-day answer to those icons came in 2010 in the form of Titus Andronicus' epic, messy, passionate, over-the-top masterpiece, The Monitor. Similarly, fans of the Smiths, Tears for Fears and the Church may find solace in Merchandise's similarly epic
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For weeks, now, I've been trying to shake the images of Ich Hunger from my brain. Made by local filmmaker Isaac Olsen, Ich Hunger is a German expressionist freakout concerning a "creature boy" who lives in the forests of Germany and eats people. Saturday, as if Ich Hunger wasn't visually
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As a rule, I'm generally all for any puns involving "Monster Mash" singer Bobby "Boris" Pickett. Nailed it, Horace Pickett! As if its awesome name wasn't enough, the band actually does well at evoking the cheesy party vibe of "Monster Mash." Though the band claims that it often gets comparisons
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Look, I'm going to level with you: Live performances are where it's at. This is the thing that I'm trying to persuade you to do. To see live shows. What sounds more fun to you: some chillwave band that will allow you to contact the douchiest and most reposed part
