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 

Lifesavas w live band! at Nectar

Thurs, Mar 6

-Lifesavas w/ Live Band
-One Struggle feat. Ras K’dee

9 PM / 21+
$12 adv.

Some of the best Hip Hop out there comes right from Portland. Lifesavas blend soulful, hard-hitting beats, and spiritual consciousness. Check some out here:

Lifesavas - Shine Language

Sunday Night Blackouts at High Dive FREE!!

St Pattys Day Blowout! @ High Dive

Sunday Night Blackout
The Goondocks
DJ Taco Supreme

Free-Free Free

7:00

Seattle’s Sunday Night Blackouts are putting the rock back in rock and roll. I’m a believer that indie music will be killed once and for all if this sound makes a revival, and I’m OK with that. And once again, this show is FREE!!
Man, the High dive is just givin it away this month.  Blakes/Detroit Cobras on the 8th and this show tonight, they can do no wrong.

Feral Children at High Dive 2X

KEXP AUDIOASIS 6:00 show
Holy Ghost Revival
The Feral Children
$ 7

KEXP AUDIOASIS 9:00 show

The Feral Children
Sirens and Sailors
The Femurs
$ 7

Another of our favorites, Feral Children will be on twice tonight with the KEXP Audioasis Broadcast- a Monthly event designed to showcase local bands and support local charities. All Proceeds will benefit Parent Trust for Washington Children

What I’m Trying To Say is - Bring Back The Rock!

Rockin the ass out of Valentines day in Fremont.
It’s all a bit hazy, but it’s slowly coming back to me in bits and pieces. Valentines Night in Fremont, I attended what I’ve dubbed as the Unintentional Valentines Music Festival. The High Dive and Nectar both had 8-band lineups peppered with local favorites-both were considerably cheap to get into ($7 and &10 respectively)-and both are practically across the street from each other.
The High Dive was home to the Great Valentines Day Massacre. MC-ing the going-ons, along with Coz from presenters, Nada Mucho, was the (in)famous KEG. KEG IS “The Lone Ranger of Rock.” Everything you could possibly imagine from a person with such a title is doubly true for KEG. We even more appropriately titled him the Mayor of Rockville as he introduced himself to almost every individual in the crowd, shaking hands with his right while tossing his hair out of his eyes with the left. He paraded around the place decked to the teeth in butt-rock gear complete with ankle bandannas, skull headband, wristbands, bangles, spangles and obligatory rocker mascara. Even fingering his flying V as he went. KEG thanked each and everyone for coming. He even introduced us to Lake of Falcons, (who knocked the back wall out of the High Dive, but more on that later.) And all that’s not even the impressive part. Aside from being the one-man glam-rock show that he is, playing drum tracks and looping them along with rhythm guitar, then thrashing the ever living crap out of the stage, this guy has the best “rock-kick” I’ve ever seen. Seriously, we’re talking entire boot above the head, like 10 times a song. Fuckin’ A! And in the tiny 1/2 hour set that he played KEG pulled out every quintessential rocker move imaginable. From leaping off of chairs and monitors, to playing the guitar behind his head and with his teeth (not at the same time of course, he’s just a butt-rocker, not a god). The set ended with Keg’s sing-along tune, “What I’m Trying to Say is - Bring Back the Rock!” and left us all completely dumbfounded.
And all of this happened after Lake of Falcons broke in the night with an incredible-albeit short-set. I haven’t even gotten to that yet. Frig, I haven’t even left the High Dive yet. There’s still another venue to visit here. But first, lets talk about this Lake of Falcons.

Black Lips at Neumo’s: a different kind of review

The infamous Black Lips, in support of their rockin’ album, “Good Bad Not Evil”, played a Monday night at Neumo’s in early February. The show went kinda like this:

It’s not that they didn’t play their asses off. We just weren’t into it.
(p.s. someone STILL hasn’t sent me that King Kong track…)

Music for Lovers -Freemont’s Unintentional Valentines Day Music Festival

This Valentines day there is a strange anomaly happening in Fremont. Both Nectar and the High Dive have completely stellar line-ups scheduled consisting of sixteen, yes, count them, sixteen North West bands. 8 at each venue. Now the 2 places are not officially affiliated with each other, but they ARE officially right across the friggen street from each other. Now both are a great value on their own. Nectar is only running at $10 for the entire night. High Dive, even cheaper at $5 ($7 doors).

Now just consider this, pay the door fee at BOTH Nectar AND the High Dive. You would be dropping a total of $15 dollars and have access to all 16 bands. That means you can catch the Cops AND Partman Parthorse. Hell if you hate either, you have the option to head across the street and see someone you’ve never even heard of before.

It’s your very own valentines day music festival.
So, that’s the plan. Band listings are after the break. Both events start at 8:00

Sound Off! The under 21 Battle of the Bands

For the seventh year running, EMP hosts the all under 21 NW Battle of the Bands Competition, Sound Off! The event is meant to give young performers a once in a lifetime chance to showcase to Seattle what they have. In the past, bands such as Schoolyard Heroes, Idiot Pilot, Mon Frere, The Lonely H, Dyme Def, Capitol Basement, The Lonely Forest and Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head have all battled it out in the finals and into our playlists.

But before we get to the final, we get to work through The Semifinals (which should be noted, happen in THREE parts) begining this Sat the 9th and continuing on the 16th and the 23rd. The semi’s feature 4 bands apiece and the winner of each will proceed to the Final on sat Mar 1st. Each round costs all of 7 bucks for students and EMP members, 10 for the rest of us to get in. All shows happen in the Sky Church which is almost worth sitting and staring at even without a band playing.

Here’s the lineup for each of the “semi”finals with finals TBA.
I’ve heard most of the first night’s bands on KEXP’s Audioasis with Lisa Wood last Friday. I personally think New Faces have a solid shot. The lead singer-all of 16- has already come into a full rich baritone voice without any of the Peter Brady crackles. I have yet to listen to the bands for the remaining nights but I have links to all their MySpace pages if you want to hear them out.

With the track record that this event has, I’d recommend checking out as many of the rounds as you can.

Semifinals round 1 - Sat Feb 9th f- 8:00 features
The Batteries, Carnation, WA listen
The Dead Are Judged, Marysville, WA listen
New Faces, Port Townsend, WA listen
and
Southgate, Pendleton, OR listen

Semifinal round 2 Sat, Feb 16th - 8:00 features
KnowMads, Seattle, WA Listen
The Nextdoor Neighbors, Olympia, WA Listen
Pat Goodwin, Seattle, WA Listen
Scribes, Seattle, WA Listen

Semifinal Round “3″ Sat, February 23 features
Deer City, Issaquah, WA Listen
Kusikia, Tacoma, WA Listen
Man Down Medic, Seattle, WA Listen
Shotty, Kirkland, WA Listen

FINAL happen Sat March 1 - 8:00