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Friday, March 8: Red Jacket Mine

The New Frontier Lounge

RED JACKET MINE: The band released "Someone Else's Cake" LP last month. Photo credit: Anna Hoychuk Photography

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By the time "Amy," the lead-off track on Red Jacket Mine's latest album, reaches the totally over-the-top organ breakdown, I'm completely sold on whatever Red Jacket Mine is doing. That organ solo hearkens back to the ballsy pop-mindedness of old guards like Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. At a time when punk was reestablishing simplicity and authenticity in music, people like Costello and Jackson were doubling down on the old ways - hitting them harder and more precisely than what was expected. Red Jacket Mine continues that tradition. Instead of running from pop music, the band's way of standing out is to do it better and tighter than its peers. The rest of the band's album is filled with equally outstanding and effortless-sounding moments. Every brilliant addition of a honky-tonk piano or crisply hand-clapping refrain just reeks of professionalism.

THE NEW FRONTIER LOUNGE, W/ THE VARIETY HOUR, TREES AND TIMBER, 9 P.M., $5, 301 E. 25TH ST., TACOMA, 253.572.4020

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