Music
Last July, the Viaduct - one of Tacoma's few remaining all-ages venues - shuttered, leaving a crucial void in the local music scene. Spots like The Den still host teen-friendly gigs, but the options for the area's underage crowd are especially anemic nowadays, even by Tacoma's standards. Jeremy Bushnell, who had
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Liz Janes' new album for Asthmatic Kitty, Say Goodbye, is pretty close to flawless. Regardless of whether or not her Starbucks-friendly instincts tickle your earholes, it's hard to deny that her voice is gorgeous and supple, her lyrics insightful (even when they're talking about pixels - seriously! - as
Music
"Meth metal" band Owen Hart have a talent for demanding attention, whether through the aggro assault of their music or with disarmingly twisted, comical track titles. They're as heavy as they are heavily self-aware; even their name has a morbid, winking quality, deriving from the famed WWF wrestler who plummeted
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Hardcore music, like American icon and "World's Oldest Teenager" Dick Clark, will probably never die. Wherever there are angsty, cloistered youth - and the South Sound, just like practically everywhere else, has no shortage - there will be an appetite and audience for bands as forceful and furious as White
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The holidays are traditionally a time for giving back, and in that spirit, Hell's Kitchen is hosting their annual "Customer Appreciation Night." Beleaguered, cash-strapped attendees will be pleased to hear that admission on Thursday night will be free, food will be free and drinks will be sold at preposterously low
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On Dec. 26 at The New Frontier Lounge, veteran local hardcore trio Cody Foster Army will be playing one of their "disarmed" acoustic sets. The early show (starts at 7 p.m.) also includes Looking for Lizards and Rich Bundy, and has a post-holiday wallet-sparing two-for-one entry policy. I caught up
Music
Sunday at The New Frontier Lounge, veteran local hardcore trio Cody Foster's Army will be playing one of their "disarmed" acoustic sets. The early show (starts at 7 p.m.) also includes Looking for Lizards and Rich Bundy, and has a post-holiday wallet-sparing two-for-one entry policy. I caught up with CFA
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Part of the appeal of Apricot & the Beginners' gentle indie lies in the way their impeccable instrumental arrangements interact with huskily delivered, domestically minded - and sometimes silly - lyrics ("BLTs at 2 AM / Nothin' better than preemptive hangover medicine"). There's an undeniable winsomeness in the raw sound
Music
On "Where?," Track One of Mount Eerie's latest release, Song Islands Vol. 2, renowned Washington musician Phil Elverum sings, "Mt. Eerie is playing tonight / where is the concert, and will it be all-ages?" Despite the somber mood set by his sparse guitar and plaintive overdubbed vocals, the song seems
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Inspired by greats like the Softies, the Field Mice and Beat Happening, Seattle trio Seapony's confectionary lo-fi pop has already caught the attention of DJs and bloggers nationwide, despite the band's relative infancy (they formed over the summer). And though their song "With You" has the unfortunate distinction of evoking
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This time of year heralds many things, including Seasonal Affective Disorder, ugly sweaters, Rankin Bass TV specials and, for music aficionados, the sweated-over year-end "best of" lists. In a similar spirit, Tacoman Andrew Childs has assembled his own Best of Tacoma 2010 compilation CD, which he'll be releasing at the
Music
Inspired by greats like the Softies, the Field Mice and Beat Happening, Seattle trio Seapony's confectionary lo-fi pop has already caught the attention of DJs and bloggers nationwide, despite the band's relative infancy (they formed over the summer). And though their song "With You" has the unfortunate distinction of evoking
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For the uninitiated, guitarist Dick Dale initially rose to fame during the high tide of the '60s surfing craze. While some peg "surf music" as synonymous with the sunny pop of the Beach Boys, for many it's Dale's turbulent, violently fast guitar sounds - coupled with the
Music
For the uninitiated, guitarist Dick Dale initially rose to fame during the high tide of the '60s surfing craze. While some peg "surf music" as synonymous with the sunny pop of the Beach Boys, for many it's Dale's turbulent, violently fast guitar sounds - coupled with the reverb effects developed
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Ghost Feet don't tread as lightly as their name might imply, but they do skip across subgenre boundaries with the ectoplasmic ease of something truly spectral. Theirs is richly textured electronic music, with resounding, chiming melodies and cascading bittersweet synth lines slipping and sliding around an ultra-dense carbon core of
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It's been a tumultuous year and a half for Seattle party-rap provocateurs Mad Rad. The hard-living quartet recently came out the other end of a much-publicized career rehab (masterminded by former über-manager Kerri Harrop) that saw them distance themselves from scandalous headlines, and, with impressive velocity, rise from being blacklisted
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It's appropriate that the name of Seattle post-rock five-piece They Rise, We Die is meant to have tidal connotations (when I profiled them in the Volcano's pages back in July, they corrected my assumption that the name might have something to do with zombies). After all, post-rock is all about
Music
It's been a tumultuous year and a half for Seattle party-rap provocateurs Mad Rad. The hard-living quartet recently came out the other end of a much-publicized career rehab (masterminded by former über-manager Kerri Harrop) that saw them distance themselves from scandalous headlines, and, with impressive velocity, rise from being blacklisted
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If you're in the mood to have a butter-voiced elder statesman of soul make sweet, sweet love to your earholes, get thee to the Emerald Queen Casino, because late-'80s/early-'90s phenom Keith Sweat is set to perform there. There's no word on whether or not his enviable wardrobe of "Cosby
Music
In true underground tradition, Broken Water is a band that deliberately smears the boundaries between various genres - garage, punk, shoegaze, s***gaze - and in doing so, generates something wholly unique, exciting and loud as hell. Their recent West Coast tour was an ambitious undertaking, including stops in Montana, Arizona,
