Foals and Blakes Galvanize Seattle - 2 Great Nights at Chop Suey

This past weekend (Feb 16 and 17) I spent, what some might consider, waaaaay too much time bouncing around the floor of Chop Suey. Both Friday and Saturday nights had bands that electrified the joint into a twitching and pulsing masses that some might even recognize as dancing…

The Blakes headlined Friday night’s show and shined as the gem of the night. They are jumping into a European tour this week and their enthusiasm was clear. The band has a magnetism that makes their style of grimey psychedelic rock unforgettable. The crowd at Chop Suey was charged with it and the band vamped it up with sweating screaming indulgence. Brothers Snow and Garnet Keim along with drummer Bob Husak neatly handed out all the hits from their self titled album which essentially means they played through the whole damned thing. They also tossed in some new songs to road test on the home crowd, likely to show up on a new album - most of which, I heard from Husak, has already been written for months. Can’t wait untile they’re back in the studio, but can’t complain about the abundance of shows lately. Be sure to catch them March 8th at High Dive with the Detroit Cobras.. oh and it’s $Free
The Blakes-Two Times
Saturday, Foals exploded into the night with jackhammer ferocity. For some unexplained reason, other than that Sub Pop wanted to pimp these relative unknowns to their local and loyal peeps, this show was $Free to anyone and everyone who bothered to show up. They are a 5 piece disco-rock band from Brighton fronted by Yannis Philippakis and Jimmy Smith on lead and rhythm guitar. They each play in perfect high pitched discord, almost everything above the 12th fret. Their guitars strapped close to their throats and chirping like electrocuted crickets.Walter Gervers takes bass playing into a jerking and convulsing realm along with the piercing leads. Jack Bevan’s drumming was presise and punctuated, but what really struck me as the night progressed was Edwin Congreave on keyboards and synth. This is where the bread and butter of the band comes from. The echoing pulsing sound. This is the source of the hypnotism, the part that kicks you in the back of the knees over and over causing you to bob and weave. The entire floor of Chop Suey felt it and it was seething.
There wasn’t much interaction with the crowd on a verbal level. Not that they didn’t “say” anything, it was more that we couldn’t make any sense of their thick Brittish accents, but Yanis made his way into the crowd twice. More stunning than exciting the crowd, but to their delight none the less.
I am anxious for the American release of their upcoming Sub Pop album, Antidotes due to release-in late March/early April. Astronauts and All-below-is a great example of the band’s hypnotic sounds but unfortunately will not appear on Antidotes

Foals-Astronauts and All
Honorable mention of the night goes to the Sleepy Eyes of Death who performed behind a veil of smoke, creating an ethereal feeling that was compounded by their heavy, yet ambient music, a synthesized conglomeration of keyboards with heavily distorted guitar, lead by disco-beat drums. Some live, some mechanized. The whole thing sounded like something a machine that recently became self-aware would create. Keep an eye out for their upcoming LP as they are working full bore towards getting that completed.

Sleepy Eyes of Death-Mean Time Till Failure

Photos by Kevin leDoux 

Popularity: 28%

Who is this JITMAN? The John-In-The-Morning-At-Night show

KEXP DJ, icon and all around presence, John Richards stabs another year dead and to celebrate the station has announced this year’s JITMAN lineup (that’s John-in-the-Morning- at-Night for those out of the Seattle hip lingo loop) happening Friday, March 7th at Neumo’s at 8:00.
This event continues the theme of previous JITMAN shows by showcasing the best up-and-coming artists who are getting significant air play on John’s morning show as well as being host to the John Richard’s Birthday Bash.
The lineup does not include any NW bands this time around, but John has instead invited some far away friends, that he has been touting for years, to come fill our hungry heads. At the top of the bill are the Duke Spirit dark, blues-tinged psych-rock from London. Also performing are stylish British indie-rockers The Voom Blooms, (KEXP has a free sample track from their EP-Nine Ships here) and Tulsa, the atmospheric indie-pop band from Boston. (KEXP has a free sample track from their 2007 EP here) Both the later bands are making their virgin pilgrimages to Seattle.

The show will be aired on KEXP’s Nite Life (Fri nights from 9-1) which also means that the station’s Friday Night Gem, Michele Myers will be there to DJ between sets and throughout the night. That is a party in and of itself.

Proceeds will, as always benefit the station and help keep KEXP listener powered. For more info visit the station at KEXP.org

Popularity: 28%

rbally.net - Live Music Feast - Redux

About a year ago, NWMBlogger, Matt, wrote us about rbally.net
rbally.net features a collection of (free) MP3s from neumerous bands’ live recordings. Sadly, the site closed down last year but has since reopened for buisiness.
Now this isn’t just a mish mosh obscure prague rock and antiquated grunge. rbally features lots of current music that made it into our Top whatever listings of 2007. Just off the front page today I see Steve Malkmus, Radiohead, and Sonic Youth recordings ranging from 2005 to 1992.
Jennings, the papa of rbally admits he probably won’t be as prolific as he was about posting in the past but thinks it will be reasonable to expect a couple new listings a week, so keep your eye on it.

Popularity: 20%

Holiday Treats - Free Albums from Llama

One of my long-time favorite bands, Llama has posted their self titled album as well as a new release (so far called Llama II) on their website for free download.

Llama plays a self-dubbed style of music called stew rock which-as the name implies-is a bunch of styles boiled up together. The songs tend to be short and simple, mostly bass and drum driven with that almost marching-band rhythm Spoon often employs. The hooks do tend to get stuck in your head so beware.

You can check out the site, see some alluring llama imagery and find the albums here

If you want to just give it a test run, my personal favorite is “Alright” from Llama II

Popularity: 26%

Incredible Source for New (FREE) Music - Yup, more KEXP

Seeing that there has been a lot of KEXP talk on here about who gave what, who ain’t givin crap, who hates who, who loves who, etc, I’ve thought I’d avoid the politics of it all and let you know about a little sum-sumthin’ KEXP can do for YOU.

A couple times a month I’ll be listening to the KEXP and hear a song with such a strong hook or great refrain that I just can’t get it out of my head for days, weeks even. They have such a great ear for finding songs that I end up singing before falling asleep and wake up humming. Now as the cycle goes on and the playlists change, those songs tend to fall off the charts and slip into the ether. What I have discovered is that the KEXP Podcast GIVES you most of these songs for FREE!!! Once a day, some DJ’s most favoritest song gets posted/podcast/whatever just for you.. ta have!

Popularity: 30%