Guides
The holiday season in these parts can be particularly frustrating. Twinkling lights and red/green motifs are typically betrayed by cruelly bitter winds and dismal rain. People hold their breath for snow, and continue to hold it if it sticks around for more than a day. Feeling the holiday spirit can
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The first few moments of "Is It Alright," the opening song on Mikal Cronin's debut LP, are filled with gentle, isolated vocal harmonies that immediately fill the listener with anticipation for Brian Wilson-esque pop reverie. Suddenly, in come crashing guitars, and the rest of the song begins to feel like
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Featuring members of Future Fossils, Radio-Flyer and Omni, the Mothership has some seriously gloomy cred. True to form, on the band's terminally grunge-leaning new LP, Ten Miles Wide, there is rarely a moment not dominated by huskily shouted vocals or an onslaught of guitars and drums having a shoving match
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Hailing from Seattle, by way of Brooklyn, by way of Reykjavik, by way of Wisconsin, the Foghorns have clearly picked up some odd influences from desolate places. Using country and folk as a bed, the band adorns its songs with borrowed sounds from punk, new wave, zydeco and Hawaiian music,
Music
The Foghorns sound exhausted. Like, physically exhausted. Delirious. They sound like they've been up for two days and the only way they've found to keep their eyes open is to have a series of sing-alongs that sound, at various times, punchy, wistful, embarrassingly forthright, spiteful, defiant, sorrowful and oddly exuberant.
Guides
Parties in general, but holiday parties in particular, are tentatively negotiable fields of landmines. The added pressure of, let's say, out-of-town relatives being in attendance, or the murky phenomenon that is the work party, can turn an otherwise genial get-together into a perpetually self-regenerating faux pas machine. As a man
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"I guess, if we were stars, you'd call it an all-star band, but I don't know if we are," laughs Derek Kelley. Even though Kelley's being modest in his assessment of the Speedwobbles, that's about as close to an apt description of the band as you'll find. Not only is it
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In a manner similar to fellow bombastic locals Roman Holiday, Man Without Wax sounds perfectly radio-ready, a band just lying around, waiting for someone to discover them and throw them on the modern rock station. They've captured the sound of bands like Kings of Leon and even groups from the
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The moment you tour as the great Wanda Jackson's backing band, as the Dusty 45s recently did, I'd say all bets are off. That's a lifetime of argument-ending, "Oh yeah, well, we were Wanda Jackson's backing band," moments. As a band in their own right, the Dusty 45s produce mostly
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For years, Paris Spleen was a fixture in the Tacoma music scene, and its members were part of the local music collective, Team Unicorn. The band's music was dance-punk, with a lyrical flair that tended to bend toward the overtly sexual - They may be the first and last Tacoma
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Scout Niblett, originally hailing from England, manages to wring more tremulous menace out of her guitar than seems quite possible. A singer/songwriter with a taste for the ominous, Niblett has a way of making songs that straddle the line between intimate and violently standoffish. The moment her vocals lull you
Music
"I guess, if we were stars, you'd call it an all-star band, but I don't know if we are," laughs Derek Kelley. Even though Kelley's being modest in his assessment of the Speedwobbles, that's about as close to an apt description of the band as you'll find. Not only is it
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Redneck Girlfriend's self-given description incorporates many utterances of stuff like "yee-haw!" and references to Yankees. The band seems to be about creating the illusion of country music - shrouding it over hard rock hearts and delivering it in a blistering fury. But for as much as the band embraces this
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It's not an easy feat to stand out in the buzzing colony that is the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. There is constant activity, constant sound being emitted from frequently amazing bands, and it can sometimes blend into one collective hum. That I still fondly remember Strange
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In addition to the Big Star influence that infects just about every power pop song ever produced, the Hunting Accident has its own internal power pop lineage to draw from. Hunting Accident members Nate Greely, Aaron Stuart and Travis Shettel cut their teeth in the mid-'90s in
Music
The tendrils of power pop stretch long and wide, the shadow of Big Star looming high and heavy over an entire generation of jangly-minded power-poppers. Some embrace Big Star's #1 Record, content in a desire to create the loveliest melody in the most concisely pleasurable song; others err on the
Scene It
A sad, yet triumphant memory: I went to Disneyland when I was 6 years old. It's a common conundrum to figure out at what age it is best to take a child on their one-and-only trip to Disneyland. Too old and they don't enjoy the whimsy of the park; too
Scene It
A lot of hay is made over karaoke nights, ladies' nights, specialty dance nights and video-game nights at bars. But very little is ever said of the humble pub quiz - a time-honored tradition in the UK that's slowly been making its way across the pond for some time now. The
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Meowtain is a restlessly churning ball of jittery exuberance. The band's music seems to benefit from an overabundance of ideas and whims - each member racing to bring them to the fore. Shouts emerge, breathless, from behind a wall of crackling guitars, the occasional trumpet and vigorously shuddering tambourines. It
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Hot Victory might be ambient if it weren't for all of those drums. A three-piece made up of two drummers and a guy on keys, the tones being produced are cold, futuristic and drawn out. They are accompanied by a two-person assault of primal, pounding drums - a stampede of sound,
