Act Your Age: True Adolescents SIFF Party!

Act Your Age: True Adolescents SIFF Party featuring The Effort, The Fucking Eagles, Basemint, Black Daisy and Hunter Lea from Mono In VCF at The Comet June 6th 8pm, $7

Furnace Films will host a party open to the public at The Comet Tavern on June 6th to celebrate the screenings of the Seattle-made independent film True Adolescents, starring Mark Duplass and Academy Award winner Melissa Leo, during the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). 

The party will feature live music from local bands The Effort (featuring members of The Blakes), The Fucking Eagles, Basemint (featuring members of Wallpaper), Black Daisy, and DJ sets by Hunter Lea (of Mono In VCF).  Doors are at 8pm and the cost is $7.

True Adolescents features Seattle music and locales (including The Comet Tavern). The film premiered at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival and has been screened at major film festivals around the country before making its way home to Seattle for SIFF. 

Written and directed by Northwest native and UW alum Craig Johnson, True Adolescents tells the story of an aging Seattle rocker Sam Bryant (Duplass) with no job, no record deal, and no place to live who finds himself in charge of two teens on a camping trip that goes horribly wrong. 

The soundtrack, curated by musical supervisor Sandy Wilson (Light In The Attic Records), features pioneering 60’s garage rockers like The Sonics and 60’s/70’s baroque popsters, The Free Design, along with emerging artists like The Blakes (who play The Effort, Sam’s band in the film), Wallpaper, Mono In VCF, Hazelwood Motel, Black Daisy, Sunset Valley, and The Fucking Eagles — many of whom will play live sets during the party. 

True Adolescents will screen at The Egyptian Theater on Thursday June 4th at 9:30pm and again on Saturday June 6th at 1:30 pm. 

For more information about screenings, please visit SIFF’s website. For more information about True Adolescents please visit http://trueadolescents.com

The Blakes, The Broken West @ Neumos

Taking inspiration from early-’60s Brit rock and the D.I.Y. spirit of punk, the Blakes are comprised of Garnet Keim (vocals, guitar), Snow Keim, and Bob Husak (drummer). The power trio took root in 2001, when the Maine-born Keim siblings (who had been busking across the country since the late ’90s, working odd jobs and writing music) met Husak at a Seattle coffeehouse. The Keims were impressed with Husak’s percussion, likening its energy to that of the Who’s Keith Moon, and the three relocated to Los Angeles to write material for their newly minted band.

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 

Top 20 Singles of 2007

OK, the best album thing of the year thing has been done… and to be perfectly honest, with all of the blog browsing and one-by-one song downloading I do these days, I don’t think I’ve really listened to too many entire albums. Essentially, if I were to list my “best albums of 2007″ that would just be a list of the 5 albums I’ve listened all the way through this year. Not much to base an opinion on, eh? Now singles on the other hand, I’ve heard a ka-zillion. I’ve done my best to narrow it down and have 20 of my faves for you. Some I heard in January and have hung on through the entire year. Others are new just this week.

So without further ado, I give you my Top 20 Singles of 2007. I’ve even hooked up links to the songs/videos if you’re not familiar. Enjoy.

Best Picks for Seattle New Years Eve 2008

I’ve been keeping an eye out for the biggest and best events happening for New Years 2008. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the best things going down in the Seattle area.

(All events happen Dec 31st)

A Summer-y of Summer Shows and Albums

Though I was in LA for half of June, working all of July, bed-ridden with SARS for six weeks after July 30th and MIA for most of September, I still managed to bear witness to some rock and some roll and a lot of hip hop this summer.
I downloaded the new Common album, “Finding Forever” and despite the rough and dissonant track “Southside”, wholly endorse it top to bottom. You have probably heard “Misunderstood” with the Nina Simone sample on KEXP. This was in heavy rotation in my work van until…
Talib Kweli’s “Eardrum.” Dang, Kanye was busy, what with producing some of this album plus “Forever”. Judging by the credits, it’d be hard to beat this album: Pete Rock, Madlib, will.i.am (now off the hook as Fergalicious is off doing something else) and longtime producer Hi-Tek are responsible for its release. The beats and themes bounce all over on “Eardrum” as much as his flow on “Country Cousins.” (Is that an “Earth, Wind and Fire” sample in there?) Try to put this one down.
By the time I saw Lyrics Born and Rodrigo y Gabriela rock crowds at Bumbershoot, I had probably played Queens of the Stone Age’s “Era Vulgaris” about 30 times. These artists bolstered my faith in the State of Music 2007 as much as the subtext of “Era Vulgaris” tried to question it.
A special thanks to a couple of NWMBers for inviting me along to the Spoon show last month. Like an old locomotive trying to gain momentum, the band had to fight the mass of their last album – too slow and cumbersome for this listener – to get the show going. Once into the second half of the performance, though, they found their groove and sated up the sold-out Showbox crowd.
Surprise surprise at my friend Michael’s wedding reception at the Sunset Tavern: a private show by our beloved Cops. A great preview of the new album followed a short set during the cocktail hour that featured “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” and “Ballroom Blitz”. Hell yeah! Since my last visit to The Cops in late 2005, they have added a guitarist (Brandon of Free Electricity) and replaced founding bassist Brian Wall with Drew Church. They as solid as ever. I am eager to see them again this week with The Blakes at the Croc.
A fellow NWMB editor invited me out to see Two Gallants at the Croc earlier this month. The harmonics and minor-chord whiny-ness of Modest Mouse plus the two-piece frenetics of Hella. They totally underwhelmed me but it afforded me the opportunity to check out Blitzen Trapper, newly signed to hit maker Sub Pop. My idea that night: Radiohead mates with The Eagles and has a rockin’ Wilco baby. Whatever that whiskey-stained thought means. Check ‘em out and decide for yourself. Or grab the free show on the “KEXP Live Performances” podcast on the omnipresent iTunes.
I have been missing out on the goldenthroat rock, so tomorrow I am going to see Chris Cornell do something at the Paramount. Maybe he’ll take his shirt off. Or maybe he’ll play Billie Jean and I will try to sing along. Lately he has been covering Zeppelin’s “Thank You” and that out to be goldenthroat-tastic.
If Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings are on the road, I will have to catch the support of their third release. Anyone into it?

Bumbershoot Day 2 & 3

More Bumbershoot.  So after a full day of Bumbershoot, I was pretty tired.  Then some things came up and after that I just couldn’t motivate myself to head down to the Seattle Center.  So there is nothing to say about day two.  If anyone is dying to know what happened, the Seattle Weekly and the Stranger had professionals covering the event.  The Stranger has some nice pictures from day 1, here.  Full coverage on their ‘Slog’.

So on to Day 3…