C-leb and A-bro this past halloween party weekend

It was Saturday night and my friends and I were bar hopping in fremont dressed up in our halloween finest. Did I mention is was my birthday too??  I wasn’t really planning on checking out any music but when we hit up the hi-dive my ears perked up to something I really liked! It was a very surreal moment … spiderman, edward fork & whisk-hands, green wigged aliens and many more characters dancing to the electronica/house sounds of C-leb and A-bro looking very maqueradesque in their shiny shirts, black vests and black eye masks. Their sound fit the moment: edgy and energetic with a touch of dark to it. Perfect for the halloween bash and getting me and my friends out on the dance floor. They’ll be playing this upcoming weekend November, 3 2007 at Necropolis Arthaven Day of the Dead event where I’m sure there will be more good music (and art too), costumes and ghoulish-ness to be had.

Popularity: 18%

De La Soul this Thursday at Neumo’s

De La for ten bucks? At Neumo’s? Dang. Even if it is co-sponsored by Red Bull, and they aren’t supporting a new album, it’s ten bucks and local. 

Popularity: 31%

Kinski @ COMET Friday Nov 23rd

KINSKI, THE HACKS, SEX VID play the teeny tiny Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill. This is a show not to be missed. Kinski is gunna blow the fuckin windows out of the place!

Popularity: 21%

CD Review and CD Release: Half Acre Day (Nov 1st @ Nectar)

The CD! Local Seattle Band, Half Acre Day, releasing Fourteen Trips Around the Sun avail Nov 13th

Right off the bat, Anemone, the first cut off Fourteen Trips Around the Sun, digs its nails into you like a wildcat. It reminded me of an epic Weezer ballad. Slowly sneaking through it’s first couple light and poppy measures and them BAM it’s all over you and you’re hooked into looping it over and over on repeat. The rest of the album follows this first song up with concise, well written pop songs. Some psych-pop, some indie, and it becomes obvious that this band’s members not only play along, but all have a hand in creating and forming each piece. Fourteen Trips Around the Sun is a disc that can be listened all the way through from first to last. A rarity in CDs today.

Popularity: 27%

Free Storm Mind Clearance (Everything Must Go!)

Neil Young once sang “Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars/But I hate them worse then lepers and I’ll kill them in their cars” and Waylon Jennings spins out psych-country-soul jams with force’n'acoustic guitars and pedal steels wrap around like some sort of musical maypole sitting along drunk reminiscing on “Memories of You and I.” Tibet does see why Caeser is burning — maybe then thus the secrecy and solitude and mystery and insistince on plethora. Weighing over it all, if anything ever gets you down go to the Grateful Dead and listen “Bertha don’t you come around here no more!”

Popularity: 20%

NWMB Singles of the Week™ Yeasayer, Cribs

Stuff I’ve been digging:

Yeasayer’s 2080 [free Flash hi-qual stream]

Crib’s Men’s Needs [free Flash hi-qual stream]

Popularity: 24%

DISCS TO DIG: Neil Young, Climax Golden Twins, Parliament

NEIL YOUNG ::: Chrome Dreams II (Reprise)

After spending the 21st century hopping through various bull-headed experiments and genre exercises, Neil comes up with his first album that sounds like a classic Neil Young album. Forget the hype around it’s relation to Chrome Dreams, the aborted album from 1977, and think about it as Freedom II — a return to the style of Freedom, his 1989 “comeback” after a similar decade of inscrutable musical endeavors. Despite it’s similarities to Freedom and the eclectic hodgepodge of bonafide winners (After the Gold Rush, American Stars’n'Bars, Rust Never Sleeps), Chrome Dreams II isn’t much of a record. “Beautiful Bluebird” could have appeared on 2000’s Silver and Gold (but with a bit more bite). “Boxcar” is a banjo-driven affair with some crazy old man lyrics (”I’m like a black man/I’m like a white man/Maybe a red man/I don’t know” — really?). It then veers into the 18 minute plus leftover from 1988’s This Note’s For You (his final ’80s genre exercise — that time around to big band R&B). No wonder it didn’t make it on because it bears no similarity to the dark menace of the albums quieter tracks or the failed pomp of the bigger numbers.

Popularity: 19%

X-Ray Eyes CD Release at Croc Nov 17th

Local rockers, X-Ray Eyes are releasing their sophomore album Social Splash on Hercules Records, and celebrating with a CD release party at The Crocodile Cafe, on Saturday, Nov 17th.

You can check out some tracks, both the new and old on their site here

Popularity: 24%