Things started slowly at the hiphop weekly Nasty’s. DJ Seancee and another skillful young jock (Soul One) were spinning certified classics, all right, but attendance barely crept into double figures. Still, when is it ever not fantastic to hear out in public tracks by NWA, Ultramagnetic MCs, Eric B & Rakim, Del, Wu-Tang Clan, Brand Nubian, De La Soul, Public Enemy, Gang Starr, Main Source, KRS-One/Boogie Down Productions, Gravediggaz? Answer: Never, even if you’re the only one in the house.

Around 10:45, more people filtered in, including some of the best damned breakdancers in the area (a Massive Monkee or two did some sparkling floor work, as well as some supremely athletic cats I’d never seen before). B-boys and a B-girl did their whirlwind things to one killer jam after another. Seriously, not a dud cut was dropped.

All was going smoothly until this white woman wearing a short skirt and a sleeveless top started dancing and flirting with every B-boy in the place. She was about five feet tall and her bra straps had fallen down to the middle of her biceps. She seemed drunk, but her dancing wasn’t bad, actually. The problem was, it was more Fillmore West ca. 1969 than the Bronx ca. 1979 or Seattle ca. 2009, and she repeatedly pranced into prime dance-floor real estate while the B-boys were trying to bust their moves.

I was waiting for one of the dudes’ twirling legs to knock her unconscious, as she kept moving within inches of harm’s way, but miraculously Adidas never made contact with face. Her advances to the breakers were either half-heartedly humored or shrugged off in a blasé manner. But she was persistent. This went on for almost two hours (interspersed with numerous runs to the bar for nourishment), until she finally got a clue and exited.

Watching the woman flirt with the B-boys (and disaster), bartender Jesse said, “There’s a weird energy in here.”

Truth. I’ll be coming back, for sure.

These tracks—among many others—slayed.

It was obvious from the beginning that Sean were going to take last night's Grudge Rock game. Their strategy was to "pass" every round on to Fortress of Victory—when FoV couldn't come up with all the answers in the Family Feud-style surveys, all Sean had to do was guess one correct answer and steal their points. And it totally worked (take note, future Grudge Rock contestants). By the time the first half was over, Sean had a huge lead (in the 200s) over FoV's meager 47 points.

The bands were asked some easier questions like "Name a music star who has been rumored to worship Satan" (Dio, Ozzy, and Jimmy Paige) and "Name a song with Red in the title" ("Red, Red Wine" and "Little Red Corvette"). But this time there were two questions that got everyone tongue-tied. The first was "Name a famous rap DJ." Unable to think of anything better, both bands threw out names like DJ Spooky, DJ Scribble, and "that guy in Linkin Park." Finally someone remembered Jam Master Jay and Grandmaster Flash. The second was "Name a band you'd likely listen to after dropping acid." There were only three bands to name—Pink Floyd was the first guess and the number one answer, and the Grateful Dead were number three, but the second band was a mystery to everyone. They tried and tried again to guess it, and they failed—Led Zepplin? Nope. Jimi Hendrix? Nope. Phish? Nope. Turns out, it was the Butthole Surfers. Really? "That's bullshit!" one of the guys on FoV's team yelled. The crowd agreed.

During intermission Sean played—the drum/keyboard grindcore duo blasted through about 30 minutes worth of panicked and spastic noise. It's not really my thing, but it was still mesmerizing to watch them. I never knew it was humanely possible to play the keyboards so quickly! (You can listen to a few tracks via MySpace if your ears are less sissy than mine.)

So congratulations to Sean for your win! You played a smart game. Now what I want to see is a champion round with them and last month's winners Helms Alee. That'd be a battle.

Grudge Rock is the first Wednesday of every month at Re-bar, the next on is April 1st.

It's irresistible but not entirely fair to compare Clues to the Unicorns. Clues frontman Alden Penner founded the Unicorns along with Nick Thronburn (now of Islands, Human Highway, and other acts); while Penner's been relatively quiet since that band broke up, Thornburn's output has been wildly varied and not always quite up to their previous band's peak, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? So, it's tempting to imagine that Clues might be everything that Thornburn's bands haven't been, or, better, everything that the Unicorns was (or even better than that). But that's also like hoping that the Breeders of Frank Black and the Catholics alone would one-up the Pixes—sometimes a certain combination of personalities along with a band's time and place (not to mention the listener's age and frame of reference) all just spark in ways that are can't quite be recreated. Which isn't to say that later bands can't be good or exciting, but just that it does them a disservice to hold them up against past glories.

So, with that labored preamble, how the hell was Clues last night at the Vera Project? Well, they were just great (and yet still I put the Unicorns on my iPod for my walk home). The five piece band rotated instruments, at any given time consisting of two drummers, one on a normal kit, the other standing and playing a floor tom, a torn-up cymbal, and a variety of percussive junk (a fire alarm bell, a turntable platter as a gong), lightly overdriven guitar, bass, occasional trumpet, and keys and a Realistic (Radioshack) Moog MG-1 (not to mention one of those little $200 buy-one-give-one-to-an-impoverished-African-free laptops). Their sound at times came closer to the bright, bouncy cartoony brashness of the Unicorns than has any of Thornburn's projects; at other times, it was more dark and sinister, foreboding quiet erupting into storm clouds of shredded guitar and wild drumming. The dual drummers allowed for otherwise straightforward pop and rock songs to incorporate unusually complicated percussive undercurrents (on one song the sometimes bassist sometimes drummer pulled off an especially impressive off-time rhythm on the cymbals that, upon her closing out the song solo, elicited some cheers). Penner sang, ranging from falsetto to near shouting to a whisper, alternately playing guitar, bass, and keys. I don't know the band's songs well enough to pick any out (they're all just youtube cilps currentl), but the last three or so they did were definitely their strongest and most upbeat.

Penner's banter was subdued. He greeted the crowd saying, "How goes the battle, Seattle? Clues is with you, in the blue" (the lights were kept a dim blue for most of the set, except during one song for which Penner requested "party lights"); Penner appreciatively described the ambience as like being underwater. If Penner wasn't terribly intent on engaging the crowd, a bandmate of his more than made up for it during one song, donning a zig-zag striped afghan like a cowl before jumping into the crowd and tossing the blanket around with and at the audience and into the air, where it would hang like a magic carpet for just a second before falling onto some kid or another. That I didn't leave with songs stuck in my head by heart after one show suggests maybe that these guys aren't going to explode my (maybe unfair) expectations, or maybe it just means that I need to see them again, or hear a record, before I fully form an opinion. I'm looking forward to doing so.

Briefly, elsewhere on the bill: City Center are a duo who owe an incalculable debt to Animal Collective and to a lesser extent High Places (the latter of whom they've begun to repay by including them in their top 8). I got at least a little excited thinking that maybe this was a newish local band—if you're going to blatantly bite off of AC, you certainly could do worse than these dudes—but it turns out they're from New York. They built their songs using a pair of Dr Samples, delay pedals, guitar, a floor tom and cymbal, and a pair of mics. Their vocals were alternately piled-on layers of blurry delay or brief, piercing yelps (sounds familiar, no?). Sometimes things got out of control and clipped a bit or else seemed to be reiterating just slightly beyond the band's control, but for the most part they built some pretty grooves and summoned out of the bright murk the occasionally stirring chorus. Entry level bros, but endearingly so. Local six-piece band Iji (who include both saxophone and, what was that an omnichord?) seem to aim for the ebullient band geekery of Architecture in Helsinki or Los Campensinos (with maybe a touch of Vampire Weekend's studiously loose grooves), but they don't quite hit those marks—the band is about 110% enthusiasm, a percentage that unfortunately doesn't leave a lot of room for anything else.