Don't forget to invite Party Crasher.

This guy.

Personally, the Dutchess & the Duke bore me to tears—if their music was playing at a campfire, I would fall asleep and be burned to death (and they would laugh!)—but Travis Ritter thinks they're swell (and commenters think they're really nice people!):

That sound really came to life during last December's heavy snows, when Seattle was paralyzed by frozen roads and slippery sidewalks, and the duo played a special acoustic set for a friend's birthday in the frigid bowels of a gutted former restaurant/­nightclub that lacked proper heat. Those who braved the weather and trekked down to a dimly lit room barely warmer than it was outside stuck it out by huddling close around the band, drinking, and singing along. After seeing the band play around town on numerous occasions in 2008, including their first sold-out show at the Tractor Tavern, it was exhilarating to catch them in such an intimate setting, with no need for amplifiers and microphones. There was no campfire to provide heat, but there was a warm communal spirit in the air, everyone singing together in harmony.

More to my liking is anticon. genre-blurrers Why?:

Wolf's singular, self-consciously morbid lyricism is the constant. He excels as always at juxtaposing the big, existential questions (hence the band name) with telling little lyrical details, and he handles his weightiest subjects with enough wit and grace to make them seem if not light then at least bearable. There are usually at least a couple layers in these songs: First, Wolf frets about death, then he worries about his fretting, and then he chastises himself for his compulsion to act it all out in front of people and on record. This self-devouring cycle would, you know, devour lesser lyricists or just play out as goth-poetry-notebook solipsism. But Wolf makes the navel-gazing captivating.

Dave Segal profiles Karl Blau and his latest, Zebra:

With Zebra (released October 6 by K Records), Blau has made his boldest and most interesting record to date, a melodically gorgeous, rhythmically scintillating celebration of his inspirations. That being said, Zebra possesses a gentle otherworldliness that's more characteristic of Arthur Russell's work than it is of any black artist who comes to mind. It sounds as if Blau's not simply trying to imitate myriad African-­diaspora artists, but rather that he's assimilating traits from musicians like Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, the Meters, Toots Hibbert, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Sun Ra, and filtering them through his distinctive sensibilities. The project comes off as respectful and earnest rather than as crass cultural plundering.

Speaking of Anacortans, the latest album from local treasure Mount Eerie:

The album begins with a crescendo of drums and guitar, a blast of sound that within seconds, and without actually changing, becomes an almost ambient hum. Like many doom/drone metallers, Elverum uses distortion, distilled riffing, and blanketing percussion to generate texture more than dynamics—and to effectively evoke the howl of a harsh wind. But even when the instruments around him are roaring, Elverum's songs are deliberately paced and his singing hushed, creating an audio image that reiterates his oldest themes: Here's Nature/the Universe/the Wind, huge and overwhelming, and here's Phil, small and quiet and straining. Elverum employs this approach to great effect on "Wind's Dark Poem," "The Hidden Stone," and "The Mouth of Sky."

Michaelangelo Matos on recent hiphop craze jerkin':

Jerkin' is homemade hiphop produced almost entirely by L.A. teenagers who wear post—Kanye/Pharrell skinny jeans and ultracolorful gear, and who rap enthusiastically and often amateurishly over oft-skinny, homemade beats. Lots of it is dross, of course. But when it isn't, it's amateurism as inspired in its way as early lo-fi, post punk, or Chicago house, the latter of which it sometimes resembles sonically—the blunt vocals of "Nasty Girl," "Don't Need No," and "Better Than You" have the eerie feel of the ultra-low-budget early Trax catalog. Sometimes, as with "Pockets in My Pannies," the sound recalls the booming early productions of Marley Marl—though without anyone sweating the verbal skills too hard.

Data Breaker on SF techno weirdo Sutekh:

Sutekh (San Francisco producer Seth Horvitz) has been one of American electronic music's heaviest cats for over a decade. Schooled in avant-garde composition, he's also savvy to the ways of the most cutting-edge advances in digital music technology, which helps Sutekh to bridge highbrow dance music and experimental sound design with supreme elegance.

Larry Mizell Jr. on Phone Phreak Sonny Bonoho:

Synthesizing a singular eccentricity and nonstop grind, Sonny Bonoho is one of the scene's most stridently unique talents—well-known to anybody who's ever touched a mic in town, but perhaps unknown to a lot of fans. Something tells me that with his upcoming LP, Phone Phreak, and his bicoastal grizzly, all that's about to change. Striking a very different stance than his outrageous, Coogi-suited, cowboy-booted party-life debut, Life of a Backup Singer, Phreak makes his next move his best, taking a soulful approach familiar to those who know the deeply spiritual MC/producer/hustler.

Christopher Delaurenti on Music of Rememberance:

You are dead. Will you be remembered with music? Commemorating a single life is usually straightforward; everyone has at least a favorite song or two. I smiled at my friend Fred's funeral when REO Speedwagon's "Live Every Moment" began dribbling through the speakers. The music, though treacly, was a brave choice for a macho guy of my generation: In 1984, I muttered something nice about REO Speedwagon to my fellow burger-flippers only to be menaced with a raised fist and a battle cry, "You mean REO FAGwagon!"

Tending the collective dead with music is more complicated. As the bodies pile up, the cumulative anonymity of every lost soul blurs grief into an amorphous sense of loss. Despite its grim mission—to promulgate the music of those who perished in the Holocaust—Seattle's Music of Remembrance (MOR) resists the temptation to make one piece or one song stand for many by serving as an ongoing, perpetually renewing memorial.

Megan Seling on Brand New (to D&D's credit, there are things far worse than boredom):

Long Island rock band Brand New may still be best known for that radio hit from years ago, "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows," but they're more than that sparkling guitar riff and Morrissey-wannabe croon, goddamnit, and their catalog, now four full-lengths deep, is much more impressive than that one song.

They've always flirted with grisly imagery in their lyrics, even in their earlier pop-punk days ("Seventy Times 7," for instance, wishes for its subject's violent death via car crash). In 2006, the band started to express that darker side in their music as well, with the release of the turbulent (and tragically named) The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. Last month, they released the follow-up, Daisy, their most haunted record yet.

Plus: Up & Coming, Poster of the Week, Party Crasher, and our complete music calendar listings.

Dave Segal spotlights Decibel Festival:

The popular perception of Seattle's Decibel Festival is that it's dominated by highbrow techno and experimental music. Those elements definitely factor into the fest's program, but there's far more to it than that. At any given showcase during this annual celebration of electronic multimedia arts, there's bound to be just as much dancing and whooping as there is chin scratching and serious contemplation.

A striking change to this year's bill is the preponderance of dubstep and other bass-centric producers and DJs. Although Decibel director Sean Horton contends that Decibel has been high on low-end-­intensive electronic music since its 2004 inception, it appears that this year marks an increase in attention paid to musicians and DJs prowling around the sound spectrum's lowest realms.

Eric Grandy on Grand Archives:

"We had written a whole slew of songs for this record that were really upbeat and generally focused toward a live audience, which is fun and all, but once we got it down on tape, it sounded really contrived and phony," says Brooke. "Like we were trying to be something we weren't. We made the choice to scrap it and start over from scratch, [and] it was actually really relieving."

The result of this scrapping and starting over is the band's sophomore full-length for Sub Pop, Keep in Mind Frankenstein. The record bears all the band's familiar traits—hushed singing and instrumentation, an occasional and slight country twang, plenty of reverb, unshowy but enveloping four-part harmonies—its overall sound falling somewhere in between the intimate, often somber arrangements of their debut four-song demo EP and their bigger, brighter self-titled album.

Read about this week's notable shows and music in Up & Coming, such as tonight's show with Jackie-O Motherfucker:

(Lo-Fi) Part of Portable Shrines' Escalator Fest, tonight's bill boasts some heavy psych sounds. Lumerians tend toward brawny, bass-heavy hallucinogenic rock with eerie keyboard and haunted vocals, at times with a hint of Can-like drone. Portland's Jackie-O Motherfucker, who've mellowed some since 2003's Magick Fire Music and Wow! (a gathering of two previous vinyl-only releases from 1999 and 2000), now play slightly more even-keeled meandering folk that's interjected with all manner of other genres. Some music-critic types refer to this as "New Weird America." Seattle mainstays Kinski create sweeping instrumental-rock soundscapes that leave bruises. With their pleasantly harried constructions, Purple Rhinestone Eagle hold down the scuzzier side of things here. GRANT BRISSEY

Read about the newest singles and releases in It's a Hit:

"Hyph Mngo"
by Joy Orbison
(Hotflush)

The beginning of "Hyph Mngo" barely registers the first time through. That's on purpose: It's a couple piano chords hidden behind heavy curtains, with a timekeeping tick. Around the minute mark, things shift, and the piano rumble reveals itself as silvery synthesizer chords, drifting back and forth; then the background falls away, and the chords are joined by a treated female voice yelping "I do!" and another just going "Ooh!" An elastic bass and beat come in: This is dubstep, but with a euphoric sense of purpose rather than foreboding that used to be the style's stock-in-trade. The elements repeat and alternate like there's no tomorrow. It's simple and hugely effective, a club anthem in London months before its official release, and pretty much the dance record of the year.

Data Breaker's guide to Decibel Festival:

This year's Decibel Festival may be the best ever. Now in its sixth edition, Decibel, —through the outstanding curatorship of director Sean Horton, —continues to further its reputation as a world-class event on the level of Montreal's MUTEK.

If you've been paying attention, you'll notice an annual pattern with regard to this local digital-arts extravaganza. Every year, a financial crisis forces Decibel's fate to dangle dangerously over the precipice. Somehow, somewhere, the dB crew secures funds and proceeds to book a lineup consisting of dozens of phenomenal talents. It's an old story, but I for one never tire of hearing it—, mainly because most of the characters change and the sounds they create deviate enough from year to year to avoid stagnation.

Larry Mizell Jr on the Let Go:

That being said, let's get to the job at hand here. This month's edition of the Corner (September 25 at the Rendezvous, of course) is a study in contrasts. You got fresh-off-their-latest-tour emo-rap heartthrobs the Let Go (whose Kublakai is also headlining a show at Nectar on September 30), They Live! (uh, never heard of 'em), local femcees known as Canary Sing (Ispire and Lioness, currently workin' on their debut record and combining their wry out 'n' about, sultry/hype perspective with a lil' grown 'n' sexy), and Bay Area to Sactown to SEA hustler Outrageous. Outrageous's album Two Time Tim (dedicated to his lost homie Adam "Bizar" Todd) is sonically in line with that Federation-style post-hyphy vibe, all synth-menace production and hustle-grind, getting-money narrative.

Christopher DeLaurenti on Steve Peters:

Also this weekend, Steve Peters celebrates his 50th birthday with a concert (Sat Sept 26, Chapel Performance Space, 8 pm, $5–/$15 suggested donation with a free CD). Just about everyone connected to experimental music in Seattle knows Peters, including yours truly (I sporadically perform with him and a half-dozen other rotating members in the Seattle Phonographers Union or SPU).

Usually seen running perhaps the best venue for experimental music in town—the Chapel Performance Space—, Peters remains underrated as composer and installation artist. His Webster Cycles, written "for any combination of wind instruments or voices," ranks with Steve Reich's Piano Phase, Philip Glass's Two Pages, and other trance-classics of minimalism. Trombonist Stuart Dempster leads a small cadre of brass players to perform the sacramental Cycles, which should sound lovely inside the Chapel: Imagine drifting through an ocean-sized harbor ringed by distant foghorns.

Megan Seling on the Sleepy Eyes of Death:

Visually speaking, Sleepy Eyes of Death have the most exciting live show in the city. A choreographed light show dances against a thick cloud of fog, while the band members busily tend to stacks of keyboards and synthesizers, guitars, and drums. But it's Sleepy Eyes' music that will really floor you. For some songs, their heavy shoegaze rock is beefed up with thunderous live drumming and atmospheric guitar. Others sound like the soundtrack for maniacal robots formulating their plan of attack—precise, repetitive, and racing.

Party Crasher goes pantsless! Also, check out Poster of the Week! For more shows and live music going on this week, you can always review our searchable online music calendar.

Dave Segal on JD Twitch:

Twitch is the opposite of a specialist. His expertise extends over several musical genres: psych rock, dub, various African styles, early electronic music, punk, funk, soul, disco, experimental, jazz, post-punk, Tropicália (in 2007 he collaborated with Os Mutantes in a project called Trocabrahma), house, and techno. Eclecticism is all well and good, but if you have crap taste, diversity is a scourge. Gratefully, Twitch possesses exquisite aesthetics and an insatiable curiosity that leads to frequent discoveries of hidden sonic treasures (he possesses about 25,000 records).

Eric Grandy on the Get Up Kids

The Get Up Kids' career arc is just one of many, but it's pretty typical of what was happening to emo acts at the time. And there was something subtly conservative, both musically and ideologically, about this shift toward pop. Where emo-core was a liberalizing, progressive development from within the increasingly rigid world of hardcore questioning the deification of male aggression, looking beyond the militant Spartanism of straight-edge, opening up the floor to deeper emotional discussions, maybe even allowing for the direct involvement of the ladies at some point—this pop turn felt like a regression toward more conventional songwriting tropes, matched by the Get Up Kids' lyrical content with its idealization of male camaraderie and emphasis on monogamous romantic loyalty/fidelity across time and distance (the girl is always at home waiting, the guy is always drawn out to the road).

Check out the latest concerts and live music in Up & Coming, like the Soft Pack on Saturday:

(Crocodile) Musically, it's difficult not to compare San Diego slack-rockers the Soft Pack (formerly the Muslims) to the Strokes, as has been done before in these pages. It's a polarizing comparison no doubt, but here it's by all means a compliment. Few bands write such effortlessly catchy material with such minimal ingredients; taut, rudimentary rhythms; tasteful, fuzzed-out guitar work; and leisurely yet soulful vocals. Soft Pack frontman Matt Lamkin channels Julian Casablancas with vague hints of Richard Hell, and his drawn-out croon juxtaposed with the band's swift, self-assured compositions makes for one of the most pleasantly accessible rock formulas since the time when the Strokes produced good songs. GRANT BRISSEY

Fucking in the Streets on Pregnant:

For Saturday night, though, they made great use of their four-person lineup, Doctor's drums driving the band as the others layered three guitars' worth of ringing, rising discord. One song began with a circular guitar melody piercing through a scraped-cello-string bass sound summoned from a small keyboard; the two guitars gradually slipped out of synch and into dissonance before the song burst into a drum-pounding crescendo. Another ended with just a lopsided one... twothree drum beat sounding out on its own into the feedback swelling for the next song. The two vocalists were practically inaudible, though, respectively mumbling or screaming red-faced but always almost totally drowned out by the band's admirably loud drums and high-voltage guitar sound (courtesy of some Verellen amplifiers). Throughout the set, the songs charged ahead, galloping rhythm and chugging guitars, then halted for some disruptive drum break, then swerved into unexpectedly bright melodic passages, all punctuated by spikes of feedback and distortion.

Discover the latest singles and releases in It's a Hit:

"Party in the USA"
by Miley Cyrus
(Hollywood)

I don't hate teen-pop on principle. I don't even hate TV stars who sing on principle. But, Christ, is this trash. Flog the "Gosh, look at all these famous people I'm more famous than" card some more, Miley, it's really becoming. Slather on some more Auto-Tune while you're at it: That way we can know how much "realer" you are than the Angelenos you're in such awe of and how truly you belong in real ol' Nashville. "The DJ plays my song and I feel all right": That makes one of us.

Data Breaker sits down with the DJs of Modern Techno:

"[While] kicking around ideas for the show and trying to design a flyer, we saw [a] picture of Jesus holding the dinosaur and it kind of just went from there. Jonny, Michito, and I played records... until 6 or 7 in the morning, and it became this really cohesive thing. We have all played together many times, but as of late, our little jam sessions have been sounding better than ever and have been really inspiring in terms of the type of music we're playing and the direction that we want our parties to go.

"This show will be a round-robin session with the three of us playing back and forth, and Goner will be doing the opening set. This night promises to be an exhibition of quality dance music, a showcase for the current state of what we consider to be 'modern techno.'"

Larry Mizell Jr on Raekwon:

The album contending with BP3 is that other rap-classic sequel that just dropped, Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II. I remember seeing Rae 10 years ago on the Bohemian stage, chiding the audience for daring to think that Vol. 3 was a better record than Immobilarity—to this day, a simply batshit notion—but a decade later, he's actually got an album better than Jay's. Somewhere between the best moments of Wu-Tang's 8 Diagrams and the sort of fucked-off, old-head criminality only Rae's co-d Ghostface has done consistently well, Linx II is both a soothing balm for the dinosaurs who want to live in their eternal 1995 and an educational spiked bat of Shaolin grit for baby-faces to split their lips on. The Wu are back? Which reminds me: GZA will be shadowboxing at Neumos on September 23 with Oly's Oldominion oracle XP, hungry youngstas Kung Foo Grip, and my dude (also DJ for RA Scion and Helladope) Dev from Above.

Christopher DeLaurenti on Kafka Fragments:

Written for violin and soprano, Kafka Fragments collates stray tidbits and diaristic epigrams by the most (or at least the first) neurotic writer of the 20th century, Franz Kafka. Some seem clipped from a screenplay ("The seamstress in the downpour") while other snippets are gnomic ("My prison cell, my fortress") or read like compressed novellas ("Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial jugs dry; this is repeated again and again, until it is possible to calculate in advance when they will come, and it becomes part of the ceremony").

Megan Seling on Grand Hallway:

The band, featuring members of the Maldives, Sleepy Eyes of Death, and Voyager One, usually have to scale back or rearrange their songs live, since the studio versions have more parts than the eight members can perform themselves. Nakayama, who says the band have so far only had one rehearsal with the orchestra, is as eager as anyone to hear what these expanded live versions sound like.

Also, Party Crasher gets prehistoric! Check out Poster of the Week! Looking for more music and DJs? Look up what's going on tonight with our online music calendar.

In this post, I mistakenly called the new dance-music night at Re-bar Trouble Disco. It is in fact called Trouble Dicso. Damn my momentary dyslexia...

Anyway, JD Twitch of the group Optimo and the club Optimo (Espacio) is one of the world's most knowledgeable and eclectic DJs, and he's jetting in all the way from Glasgow, Scotland to school and entertain y'all. Come out Saturday and witness a master at work. [See tomorrow's Stranger for more illumination.]

Charles Mudede on D.Black's newest, Ali'Yah:

Three years later, D.Black has returned with an album, Ali'Yah, that is the day to The Cause & Effect's night. Whereas the old record had national ambitions, the new record is aimed at the local. The first looked outside; the new one looks inside. The first was mostly about crass materialism; the new one is mostly about the soul. The first had the hypercapitalism of Jay-Z as its inspiration; the new one is inspired by the mysticisms of Common. Even the two titles express a clear rupture: The Cause & Effect is empirical; Ali'Yah is paradisiacal.

Dave Segal on HEALTH:

Early impressions of HEALTH's new release, Get Color (released on Lovepump United, as is the debut and 2008's remix record, Disco), suggest that they may have done just that. On HEALTH, noise took precedence over melody; on Get Color, it is excellently balanced with alluring melodies. The foursome's songwriting prowess has improved, too, and the music is fuller-sounding, thanks partially to engineer Manny Nieto (Breeders, Mars Volta). Traces of sonic provocateurs like MBV, Liars, and Big Black arise and disperse according to HEALTH's peculiar modifications. Putting pretty, delicate vocals amid abrasive noise squalls isn't a new approach, but HEALTH have found a way to artfully run this formula through an especially thrilling cyclotron. Abrupt shifts in direction and tempo keep you on tenterhooks, while the songs' hooks come adorned with bracingly caustic textures.

Fucking in the Streets recaps Bumbershoot:

Sunday belonged to Holy Fuck. If you're going to give yourself a profane exclamation for a band name, you better live up to it, and Holy Fuck totally do—hell, they could add a few exclamation points and still be in very good shape. If you were diligent and lucky, you could see the band three times that day; for their proper evening performance at the Broad Street Stage, the Canadian instrumental quartet—consisting of an impressively locked-in drummer and bassist and a couple guys on cheapo keyboards and analog effects—had the crowd eating it up, dancing and clapping along and even crowd-surfing to their weird, robot-voiced future funk and muscular motorik grooves.

Read about this week's notable concerts and music events in Up & Coming, like tomorrow night's show with the Bishop/Corsano/Chasny Trio:

(Sunset) Sir Richard Bishop, Ben "Six Organs of Admittance" Chasny, and experimental drummer supreme Chris Corsano should make for a combustible "evening of improvisational and free-form jazz," as the Sunset bills it. My research unearths no documentation of this threesome, live or on record, so we could be witnessing them together for the first time. When the talent level is this lofty, you should make it a priority to witness potential once-in-a-lifetime musical magic. Veteran Seattle free-jazz saxophone colossus Wally Shoup opens with the ever-inventive Corsano. DAVE SEGAL

Find out about the newest singles and music releases in It's a Hit:

Searching for the Now 6
by the School, George Washington Brown
(Slumberland)

The last thing I figured would help make my 2009 brighter was New York indie-pop label Slumberland. But everything I sample seems to have something to it I wasn't expecting, while, of course, remaining securely soldered to a shambling, C86-style template. That's true of the most recent volume of Searching for the Now, the label's series of various-artist 7-inches (also digital). It leads off with Welsh band the Schools' version of the Left Banke's "And Suddenly," as gray-sounding an ode to sunshine as there is, while on the flip, George Washington Brown offers a pair of psych-pop goodies, one fast and fuzzy ("End of the..."), one midtempo and alternating between glittery and stomping ("Twin Towers"), all fetching.

Data Breaker on Lusine:

One of Seattle's most celebrated producers, Lusine (aka Jeff McIlwain) boasts a large discography full of deft, heady IDM, dreamily pacific ambient, and skewed dance tracks with a surprising funkiness to them. While his output on respected labels like Hymen and Ghostly International has been consistently good, his 2004 album Serial Hodgepodge represented a culmination of Lusine's masterly stylistic diversity and a deepening emotional palette; previous releases tended toward clinical—albeit elegant—precision. Now with the new A Certain Distance (out September 8 on Ghostly), he's delivered his most accessible record yet, one whose tracks charmed a large, nonhomogenous crowd at Detroit's Movement fest earlier this year.

Larry Mizell Jr on Slick Rick and Clipse:

Hey, young world. Y'all know Slick Rick the Ruler (who hasn't been to Seattle since, like, I started writing this column damn near) is coming to the Showbox at the Market on September 10 with Clipse for the Seattle stop of the Sneaker Pimps tour, right? You should also know They Live!, Grynch (catch him in Billboard this month, haters!), Fresh Espresso, Thee Satisfaction, GMK, and upstart B-boy phenoms Them Team are all rocking, too. Sneakerheads, bring 'em out, bring 'em out!

Christopher DeLaurenti on Colin Andrew Sheffield:

Afterward, the usually reclusive Sheffield mentions he's part of a triple bill sponsored by Wall of Sound (Fri Sept 11, Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave, 10 pm, $5—$15 sliding scale) with Bay Area—based artist Jim Haynes and Rob Millis. Heeding the most poetic and concise artist statement I have yet to read—"I rust things"—Haynes collages radio static, crumbling leaves, and other audible entropies into delicate sonic surfaces. This Seattle appearance also marks the opening of an exhibit at Wall of Sound (Sept 12—Oct 31, 315 E Pine St, 441-9880, free) of his bruised and mottled photographs. Millis, the other half of Climax Golden Twins (full disclosure: I performed with Millis in the Seattle Phonographers Union tentet in mid-2007), remains impishly unpredictable; going solo, he might strum obscure folk tunes on a guitar or cue up field recordings from his travels to Nepal and Southeast Asia.

Megan Seling on the Ghost and the Grace:

While Bellingham's Idiot Pilot have been busy writing and recording their follow-up to 2007's Wolves, Daniel Anderson—the guitar-and-laptop-wielding half of the electronic screamo duo—has found time to start a solo project called the Ghost and the Grace, and he's making his live debut (and releasing his album Behold! A Pale Horse) at El Corazón this Friday night.

Also, check out Poster of the Week! This week, Party Crasher installs a mural at Cal Anderson! As always, you can find a complete listing of more parties, shows and live music with our online calendar.

The information in this blurb in our Fall Arts roundup (scroll down almost to the bottom) is already outmoded, as I just found out that local garage-psych group Backward Masks won't be playing Escalator Fest, which happens Sept. 25-26 at Lo-Fi Performance Gallery and Vera Project. According to a source close to the band, they've broken up due to the usual creative differences/internal conflicts. The mighty fine DJ Mamma Casserole has been added to the Sept. 25 bill.

The inaugural edition of Escalator should be a banquet of psychedelic audio/visual delights. You can read more about its aesthetics here and here.

Find your away around all the music and festivities this weekend with the Stranger's Complete Guide to Bumbershoot 2009! Read descriptions on bands, find set times, stages and more with our handy reference.

Dave Segal on Wheedle's Groove:

You've never heard "Jesus Christ Pose" done like this. Sung by Pastor Pat Wright and her Total Experience Gospel Choir, the excoriating Soundgarden metal song becomes gospel-ized into a slow-boiling power ballad in the aged-in-soul hands of Wheedle's Groove, a loose agglomeration of youngish and oldish Seattle musicians with funkiness laced deep in their DNA. Even atheists got to shout "God damn!"

Travis Ritter talks to Cass McCombs:

The words McCombs strings together like a poet roll off his soft-spoken tongue, woven through with literary and metaphorical references. "My Sister, My Spouse," off his latest release, Catacombs, was taken from the Song of Solomon, a short biblical story that explores the courtship of a man and woman and the consummation of marriage. "I guess I had been thinking a lot about the impossibility of authenticity and the masks that we generally all wear at different points in our life," McCombs says.

Read about this week's noteworthy concerts in Up & Coming, like tonight's show with Black Stax:

(Rendezvous) Black Stax consist of Felicia Loud plus Silent Lambs Project's Jace ECAj and Silas Black. Black Stax are basically Silent Lambs Project's experiment (or encounter) with soul, featuring Loud, one of the best soul singers in town. The three are working on an album, due later this year, and their music can be described as elegant, refined, and classical. Two forces are active in Black Stax's work: one that pulls them down to the ground of tradition (the classical) and another that lifts them up to the regions of art (the progressive). Listening to Black Stax's hiphop is like walking through a gallery filled with images of black modernity.

Fucking in the Streets on Modest Mouse:

Recently, I've been trying to convince someone that Modest Mouse is an objectively great band—an impossible task, taste being subjective and all, even though I am totally right. Part of the problem has been the difficulty of describing just how close to home The Lonesome Crowded West felt when it came out if, like me, you were growing up in the next metastasizing suburb over from the band's native Issaquah.

Find out about the latest releases and singles in It's a Hit:

"Help I'm Alive"
by Metric (Metric Music International)

"If I stumble/They're gonna eat me alive"—Emily Haines sounds like she's stuck inside of a very dull video game. "My heart keeps beating like a hammer," she sings, but alas, nothing nearly so exciting goes on anywhere else in the song.

Dwelling in the subbasement of Seattle's experimental-music underground, Dialing In (Reita Piecuch) creates haunting traumlieder, egoless pieces forged from scavenged instruments and samples lifted from unknown records and Russian 78s, bolstered by surreptitious snippets from Fleetwood Mac, the Moody Blues, R. D. Burman, and Sandy Bull releases. Sruti box, guitar, and piano complement the foraged audio scraps, which are mulched into oddly nutritious drones beamed in with ritualistic intensity. From impoverished circumstances, Dialing In forges rich tapestries of exotic, distressed sound design.

Larry Mizell Jr hypes up Victor Shade:

Their comrade RA Scion has a new project cooking right now with always-on-grizzly local producer MTK (you hear "Bang Bang," the Havoc and Lloyd Banks cut he just did?), together known as Victor Shade. Who? "Victor Shade is to the Vision (the android Avenger, to all my non—Marvel Comics geeks) what Peter Parker is to Spider-Man," RA explains. "My wife's brother, a dedicated hiphop and comic enthusiast, attributed to various friends and family a superhero identity; mine was the Vision. Never really put much thought into it until his passing, and what I discovered later really affected me—this album, like much of [Common Market's] Tobacco Road, is inspired by him."

Christopher DeLaurenti praises David Robertson:

Robertson already has a sizable discography and could continue the Symphony's legacy of superb recordings. His latest disc, Doctor Atomic Symphony (Nonesuch), shows him and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra as virtuosic advocates for the rhythmically tensile music of composer John Adams. Derived from the opera Doctor Atomic, the Symphony sizzles and struts; the companion piece, Guide to Strange Places, brilliantly scrambles motifs from Petrushka. It's my favorite orchestral work of this decade.

Megan Seling previews Bumbershoot:

If you're into horn-heavy R&B, be sure to check out this year's Sound Off! winners, Dyno Jamz. The Seattle octet beat out 11 semifinalists earlier this year in the EMP's annual underage battle of the bands, and as a judge at the finals, I can assure you it was well earned. Dyno Jamz are solid performers, combining elements of jazz, hiphop, and funk with bright horn solos, positive lyrics, and smooth rhythms. (And speaking of Sound Off!, veterans the Lonely Forest are also playing.)

Also check out Poster of the Week! Party Crasher gets down with square dancing! For more shows, DJs and live music, check out our searchable online music calendar.

Eight stories of being in love and being on tour:

A makeup artist I met in Minneapolis said the following rules helped her keep a long-term relationship afloat during the three solid years (!) she spent on a Tina Turner world tour: Make some contact every day without fail, whether by phone, e-mail, or fax, and never go more than three weeks without physical contact. Even if it's just a brief encounter in an airport lounge, find a way to see your bf/gf every 21 days. That way, you're a couple separated by circumstances. Any more than that and you're exes who haven't admitted it yet. This is admittedly both arbitrary and extreme. Plus, not everyone who tours can afford to fly his or her mate out to Winooski, Vermont, for a dirty weekend once a month. However, it does address the fundamental difficulty: remaining engaged.

Kelly O talks with the Spits:

How did the Spits come to be?
Well, it all started at Chili-Fest in Antarctica in 1962. Naw, it started in the '80s when my brother Erin and I were in the Allegan Juvenile Detention Center near Kalamazoo, Michigan. Part of the therapy there was that kids had to write songs. That's when we started the band Spit Out. We felt like weirdos, like we'd been spit out by everybody, our parents, teachers.

What were you and Erin listening to back then?
Twisted Sister, Black Flag. Twisted Sister is punk, so much more so than NOFX or any of those dumbfucks, all those Hot Topic "punks." NOFX is not punk rock.

Ezra Ace Caraeff on Ramona Falls:

Leaning on friends is commonplace in the "it takes a village" process of recording an album with limited capital, but few villages could come together and create something as texturally precise and tonally ambitious as Intuit. The recording, which swells with a bevy of rich sounds that won't sound all that unfamiliar to Menomena fans, showcases both Knopf's effortless gift for complex art-pop arrangements and a Rolodex overflowing with friends/musicians on call. It's as much a statement of the artist as it is the city he resides in.

Read about this week's notable shows and parties in Up & Coming, such as tomorrow night's concert with the Purrs:

(Sunset) Tomorrow, local psychedelic pop quartet the Purrs celebrate the release of their new full-length, Amused, Confused & More Bad News. If you're a fan of the Dandy Warhols, consider the Purrs your new best friends. Wah-wah'd guitar solos are in full effect on songs like the spacey "Sister" and the more jangly "Fear of Flying." Opening the show are Blood Red Dancers, who are on the other side of the spectrum. The Purrs are floating around in a drug-induced daydream, while Blood Red Dancers get down and dirty with a heavy blues sound. MEGAN SELING

Fucking in the Streets on Japanther:

The show was the second at the park—the first was a performance by "Awesome"—but the first featuring amplification. In between bands, Wu-Tang blasted from a stereo—this was an Implied Violence benefit, after all. Planes flew low overhead at regular intervals. Apparently, during Strong Killings' set, which was out front on the street side of the building, a city bus stopped nearby and several passengers wandered over to see what was going on. Neighbors dropped by throughout the night, curious and affable. Japanther set up—their drum head looked like it said "Japantier," like it was French—and tore through one of the best sets I've seen from them in years, playing favorites like "1-10," "Challenge," "River Phoenix," "Fuk Tha Prince a Pull Iz Dum," and "Mornings."

Catch up with the latest singles and releases with It's a Hit:

"Craigslist"
by "Weird Al" Yankovic
(RCA/Jive)

Life is also too short to miss this perfect Doors rip/parody/homage, featuring Ray Manzarek himself on organ. I love every verse, from the "Missed Connections" one ("You were a blond half-Asian with a bad case of gas/I was wearing red Speedos and a hockey mask") to the impossible finale, involving a trash can full of Styrofoam peanuts ("But the trash can ain't part of the deal/Only giving you the peanuts—get real"). But the bridge clinches it: "An open letter to the snotty barista at the Coffee Bean on San Vicente Boulevard... Didn't you see me hold up my index finger? That means, 'I'll order my soy decaf hazelnut latte in just a couple minutes.'" Not to mention the video: Al's little Jim Morrison jump/leg-kick on the first chorus is as good as the record itself. Between this and 2006's insane R. Kelly homage "Trapped in the Drive-Thru," dude has gotten better than ever, right under everyone's noses.

Larry Mizell Jr on Life Cycle:

The deluge of free downloadable local-rap EPs doesn't look to be letting up any time soon, folkers. Recently, three new ones have hit the digital shelves for your perusal. Tacoma-Seattle crew Life Cycle (Joshua J, Burn One, DJ Hanibal) just put out Grounded (which you can find at www.lifecyclehiphop.wordpress.com), the follow-up to 2008's City of Rust. As on Rust, their signature blunted, hypnotic synth production style (their best aspect I think, and courtesy of Burn One) is in full effect. LC definitely have a sound that doesn't sound like shit else 'round here; I'm reminded of some of the spacier tracks from Styles of Beyond's debut, 2000 Fold. The two MCs are solid, their voices aren't annoying, and the fundamentals are in place, but their material mostly borders on a certain outdated (think the late-'90s 12-inch boom) underground mundanity: "I love this music with all my soul," "Hiphop's not dead," "Cats doin' anything to get a deal," etc.

Christopher DeLaurenti on Mood Organ:

Peering over Timm Mason's shoulder, I espied his moniker, Mood Organ, affixed to packages bound for labels famous and unknown. Every artist gets rejected; by the time we find them, the ones we know and love have been ignored, rebuffed, and rejected countless times. Yet Mason seemed calm, as if mailing Christmas cards. The pensive, gloaming tones of the disc, Visiting a Burning Museum (Debacle), reflect this confidence. Mason inscribes his music with poetic details that reward headphone listening: lonesome guitar, rustles of wind, swelling tones, and keyboards that sound like they're underwater, blurred by shivering eddies and ripples.

Megan Seling on Carousel Festival:

For the fourth year, Carousel Festival celebrates the diversity of Seattle's DIY music community with a weekend of all-ages shows (Fri—Sun Aug 28—30), featuring over 30 bands playing at venues including Healthy Times Fun Club, Gallery 1412, Cairo gallery, and others.

There's some great talent on the roster this year, with a little bit of something to please everyone. On Saturday night, heavy and hard trio Helms Alee play at the Greenhouse, along with Patrol, Partman Parthorse, and Weekend (aka Ryann Donnelly of Schoolyard Heroes and Mark Gajadhar of Past Lives and Champagne Champagne). Sunday afternoon, starting at 1:00 p.m., the uniquely voiced Whitney Ballen plays the Cairo gallery with 1985, Dennis Driscoll, and more. If you're unfamiliar with Ballen, imagine a slightly less Muppety Joanna Newsom minus the harp. She's incredible.

This week Party Crasher investigates the source of the cabbage-water smell! Check out Poster of the Week! For more concerts and live music, you can do a quick search with our online calendar.

Dave Segal on The Intelligence:

For many years, the Intelligence have been one of this city's greatest bands. And yet, a decade into their existence, they're still playing tiny venues like the Comet, the Funhouse, and the Wildrose. What the hell? The group's leader, guitarist/vocalist Lars Finberg, says the Intelligence can sell out a 500-capacity club in Paris, while places like Macedonia, as well as Oklahoma and North Dakota, prove more resistant to the band's considerable charms as does Seattle, mysteriously.

Eric Grandy on Pissed Jeans:

Over three albums, including the recently released King of Jeans on Sub Pop, Korvette has honed a self-deprecating stance that's as vicious as it is blackly comic: He has diarrhea. He's "ashamed of [his] cum." He loathes "people persons." He's an emotional eater (ice cream). He shrinks into his bed and "laughs at [his] own jokes in [his] fantasy world." He brags about his insignificance and how easily he can make himself disappear. He, in general, doesn't bother. He works a drab desk job (claims adjusting, in fact). He's tired and spent. He's losing his hair.

Charles Mudede on Yirim Seck:

Yirim Seck is 28, was born in Seattle, and is second-­generation Senegalese. Hear Me Out is his debut album, and on the flyer for its record-release party, Seck wears a leather-and-bead necklace with a pendant of Africa. This artifact takes us all the way back to the Afrocentric moment in hiphop: Queen Latifah, X Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers. From this distant past rise the phantoms of Schoolly D's Am I Black Enough for You? ("Are you somebody?/You are damn right I'm somebody") and Jungle Brothers' Done by the Forces of Nature.

Read all about this week's concerts and shows in Up & Coming, like the Sea Navy at the Sunset tonight:

On their new record, Memory Matches, the Sea Navy break the stereotype that all button-up-shirt-wearing namby-pambies strumming guitars are the anti-jocks. Singer Jay Cox is actually a sports nut, and it shows on the new record. "What Curse?" is a bright guitar-driven tune about his annual love affair with baseball and the emptiness the end of the season can bring: "Another sad September/I get home, I'm all alone/I leaned on you too much in the spring and summer months." "March Madness," Cox tells me, was "written on March 17, while watching Greg Oden's Ohio State beat Xavier during the NCAA March Madness tournament." There are some nerdier topics addressed too, though songs about lost love, favorite movie villains, and board games. MEGAN SELING

Fucking in the Streets on Mad Rad and Champagne Champagne:

The patio was packed before the game even started, the crowd full of Seattle hiphop scenesters and journalists in about equal measure. Macklemore, sporting a referee's jersey and whistle, explained the rules: The game would be to 21, the winner would have to be up by two points. After a couple leisurely long shots scored by Gray, the crowd got restless, shouting, "Y'all wanna change it to 11?" and "Next one to score!" The players picked up the pace, the game got a little more physical and aggressive, and the crowd kept with it, chanting, "Raaaad-Jaw" and "Souuuuuth End." Gray and Radjaw mean-mugged between shots, Radjaw pinching his shirt up off his chest like it was expensive, Gray grinning maliciously or making a throat-cutting motion with his finger.

Check out the latest singles and releases in It's a Hit:

"Love the Nite Away (Tiedye Mix)"
by DJ Kaos
(Rong/DFA)
It took until 2005 for someone to come up with what, in retrospect, is the most obvious musical term in the world: "yacht rock." It came from a cult-classic internet comedy series a dozen five-minute episodes total, featuring made-up "true stories" of the making of, for example, the Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes," Toto's "Rosanna," and Steely Dan's "FM." (The latter, it transpires, emerged in the wake of a blood feud between the Dan and the Eagles.) So at this point you'd figure anyone working in that vein who isn't a more-or-less earnest singer-songwriter or soft-rock type is doing so through a couple layers of irony, at least.

Data Breaker on Portable Morla:

Playing keyboards, synths, percussion, bass, melodica, accordion, and various toys, Portable Morla creates tunes that sensually slither into earshot. She composes low-lit torch songs that slyly seduce rather than slap you upside the ass. Dub influences her production style, lending her songs a lo-fi, intimate spaciousness not unlike the Kranky Records artist Nudge and Welsh post-punk band Young Marble Giants; similarly, Portable Morla's dulcet voice bears a slight resemblance to Nudge's Honey Owens's, albeit with more vibrato and theatricality. Morla's beats are relatively gentle, which allows more room for her lush, sparkling electronic embellishments to blossom. Overall, Portable Morla's introverted brand of electronic-oriented songcraft bears a distinctive sound palette and vocal tenor that will linger long after the last song dissipates into the ether.

Larry Mizell Jr on Thee Satisfaction:

Which reminds me—Thee Satisfaction's going-away party is at Hidmo on August 22; you should take that opportunity to get their new Snow Motion EP, because it's daring, deeply DIY, and one of the year's very best local releases. Touching on the black nation, Obama, space, haters, (bi)sexuality, and death (such as on the Tyrone Love—dedicated title track) in just shy of 20 minutes, Thee Stasia aka Neon Warwick and Cat Satisfaction paint a vivid, weed-smoke-trailing streak through the cosmos. That said, they need to stay they asses here, so please, everybody tell them that.

Christopher DeLaurenti on Miles Davis:

Was any other revolution in jazz so suave? When Miles Davis led a two-week stand at New York's fabled Royal Roost in 1948, the music composed and arranged for a nonet by Gil Evans, John Lewis (later of the Modern Jazz Quartet), Gerry Mulligan, and others changed jazz forever.

Revolution was already in the air: The sped-up, serpentine lines of bebop stymied mainstream musicians rooted in swing. Other contemporary experiments, notably the forays into unscored, chartless, freely improvised music fathered by Lennie Tristano as well as Stan Kenton's swaggering Innovations Orchestra, stunned and baffled listeners. But those brave ventures were short-lived.

Megan Seling on the Monsters of Accordion showcase:

The accordion is an annoyingly mysterious instrument. To me, it looks like the easiest thing in the world to play just squeeze it a little and hit some keys or something, right? My 1-year-old nephew could do that. But I tried it once, and the results were disastrous. Turns out that accordions are heavy and complicated and require a lot of skill in order to not sound like a beached whale on helium. I have no idea how they work.

But you don't need to be able to play (or even understand) the instrument in order to appreciate it. And this week, accordion enthusiasts (or even those who are just curious) have a perfect opportunity to see some masters in action at the Monsters of Accordion showcase.

Also check out Poster of the Week! Party Crasher gets down with a double birthday party! For more concerts, live music and DJs, you can browse a complete listing from our online calendar.

Eric Grandy on YACHT:

See Mystery Lights starts right in with the heavy stuff. On album opener "Ring the Bell," Bechtolt asks, over a light, tropical guitar and a steam-building beat, "Will we go to heaven, or will we go to hell?" He answers, backed by a chorus of what sounds like his own pitch-shifted voice(s), "It's my understanding that neither are real." On the next track, "The Afterlife," Evans, singing in a kind of possessed deadpan over echoing percussion, explains, "It's not a place you go/It's a place that comes to you/And it's not about who you know/Or who is in your heart." (From that mission statement: "YACHT believes in an Afterlife. YACHT does not believe in 'Heaven,' or 'Hell.'")

Megan Seling sits down with the Cave Singers:

The opening track on Welcome Joy—the Cave Singers' follow-up to their 2007 debut, Invitation Songs—is "Summer Light," a sparse and lovely pop-folk song with a gleaming guitar riff and uncomplicated but spirited drumming. The song is also an invitation—in the opening line, singer Pete Quirk coyly mumbles, "Come on baby, let's take a ride/And we might make it to morning light/The sun is bright and bold and brave/My car is a stone that gently waves."

Charles Mudede on Slum Village:

Baatin (born Titus Glover), a founding member of the rap group Slum Village, was found dead on August 1. Following his death, the word that was repeatedly used to describe his art and mode was "spiritual." The obit from the Los Angeles Times: "Born Titus Glover in 1974, the Detroit native adopted the name Baatin in the 1990s to reflect a newfound spirituality. 'Baatin' was 'Islamic for "hidden,"' he once said." From the obit headline in the Detroit Free Press: "Detroit native, known for spiritual lyrics, had recently returned to group" (Slum Village—he left it in 2002 to deal with mental-health issues). From Corprah Lanfrey's blog: "Baatin's voice and lyricism and content was a force to be reckoned with. You knew when he was on. You felt what he was saying. He was spiritual and he was fluent and he was flowing."

Check out this week's noteworthy concerts and parties in Up & Coming, like Mt St Helens Vietnam Band on Saturday night:

(Mt. St. Helens) You read that right: Tonight's Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band show is on the fucking volcano. We can't be too surprised—the vibrant indie-rock outfit have never been too shy when it comes to publicity stunts. They hyped their debut performance for months with quirky, homemade public service—esque videos. And for their CD-release party, they had their own Molly Moon's ice-cream flavor (a yummy blend of coconut, huckleberry sauce, and chocolate chunks). And today, they'll be the first band to perform live on Washington's only active volcano. But it's not just a rock show; it's also an educational experience. The $25 ticket price includes a live performance as well as a lecture about the volcano's history, and for an extra $10, you can go on a preshow guided hike of the area with the band. All proceeds will benefit the Mount St. Helens Institute, and tickets are available online at www.mshvbconcert.eventbrite.com.

Read about the newest music releases in It's a Hit:

"Chameleon"
by Christina Milian ft. The-Dream
(MP3)
The starlet who brought us "Dip It Low" in 2004—groaning,almost subcutaneous bass; halting tempo; clopping percussion;near-whispered vocal—comes back to do it again, only this timeeverything is stripped down even further. Also, she wants us to knowwho she truly is. And brilliantly—as befits someone whosepersonality is no major shakes in and of itself—that personalityis... whatever you like. To wit: "I can be suburban/Dinner's in theoven" (she and producer/costar The-Dream have clearly been watchingMad Men just like everyone else); "I can be the biggest in theroom, like an elephant/I can be"—here she gets even quieter, ifyou can believe it—"the quietest—shhh! Irrelevant." Acomplete trifle the first time I heard it, a revelation the fifth, aweirdo smash the tenth.

Data Breaker on Jabon:

A Black Flag—saluting punk in the '80s, Colburn had anepiphany while listening to the Residents' Mark of theMole. A music-appreciation course at Indiana University hipped him to Stockhausen, Charles Ives, and MortonSubotnick, and immersion in mid-'80s tape-trading culture led tohim discovering subversives like Controlled Bleeding,Negativland, and Whitehouse. "I figured I could do thatkind of music, too. Fortunately, I had access to a studio in which todo tape-loop experiments. Very quickly after that, the convergence ofinstrumental Black Flag (and [Greg] Ginn's instrumental trioGone) and Chrome started to take hold. So from there onout, my tapes were made of 'rock' trio improvisation, weirdResidents-esque pop songs, intercut comedy, and general madness."

Larry Mizell Jr on Baatin:

RIP to Baatin—RAISE IT UP! My heart goes out to hisfriends and family, and to Detroit, one of the most creative spots onthe hiphop map, period, not to mention one of the hardest hit by oureconomic downturn. In recent times, the D has lost some of itsbrightest, most beloved figures. The loss of yet another foundingmember of Slum Village (RIP, Dilla) hits hard to anybody wholoves this music, as "the S" is one of the best, most innovative groupsto emerge in the last 15-odd years. Baatin's spiritually mindedmantras, for me, often took those earlier Slum songs to a lofty,underexplored plane (just as his dirtier raps helped SV wallow in awonderfully prurient one).

Christopher DeLaurenti on local festivals:

Two festivals continue closer to home. Perfect for people-watchingand soaking up music, Sounds Outside (Sat Aug 15, Cal AndersonPark, 1635 11th Ave, 1—8 pm, free) presents a marathon ofadventurous jazz with the Melbatones and Figeater alongwith Skerik's fun and funky Syncopated Taint Horn Quartet.Reedman Greg Sinibaldi corrals top-flight players for hisquintet, notably saxophonist Mark Taylor, bassist Geoff Harper, and Byron Vannoy. Making a rare Seattle appearance,Olympia-based out-jazz titan Bert Wilson closes the show.

Megan Seling on Bobby Birdman:

It's been years—years!—since I fell in love with Bobby Birdman. It was 2002 when I first saw him, and he was standing alone on the stage at the Vera Project back when the Vera Project was on Fourth Avenue. In between playing poignant pop songs with recurring themes of blood, hearts, and love, he was making the most of his curly mop of hair by doing Pauly Shore impersonations. Can you blame me for swooning?

This week Party Crasher goes to an Implied Violence fundraiser! Also take a look at Poster of the Week! For more music, search our online calendar for a complete listing of concerts happening in Seattle.

An index:

YACHT

The Cave Singers

Slum Village

Jabon

Gorilla Zoe

Beast, Please Be Still

Bobby Birdman

JJ

The Dutchess & the Duke, Ball of Wax, Rusty Willoughby, Nappy Roots, DJ Stingray, Red Fang, Conrad Ford, the Dodos, Head Like a Kite, Mt. St. Helen's Vietnam Band, M'chateau, Solillaquists of Sound, Ghost of Kyle Bradford, Aerosmith, Six Organs of Admittance, the Octopus Project, Silk Flowers

Read up.

In the Up & Coming blurb below (for Sat. Aug. 15), I mistakenly attributed a killer DJ set to Skyler Locatelli; actually, that killer DJ set was spun by his brother, Leif Engberg. As someone who's been mistaken for my brother many times, I sincerely regret the error. Note: Both bros are excellent DJs. See them, if you can.

M'chateau vs. Ctrl_Alt_Dlt, Method to the Madness, Skyler

(Gallery 2308) Gallery 2308 is a new art space in Belltown that also contains a big room that can accommodate musical events; it can also be rented for band practices, photo shoots, and parties. Tonight, some of Seattle's savviest techno and house selectors occupy these arty digs. M'chateau typically works the funky and soulful end of the tech-house continuum while Data Breaker fave Ctrl_Alt_Dlt (Chris Aldrich) messes with the more minimal, cerebral specimens. In a similar vein to Aldrich, Skyler killed it at Electric Tea Garden opening for New York's Big Bully earlier this year, so I'm stoked to catch another set by him—and to experience what looks to be a promising venue. DAVE SEGAL

Michaelangelo Matos talks about the 45-minute album:

Much has been said about the death of the album at the hands of the MP3. Certainly, pop music's center is no longer the album but the freestanding song, however many good or great albums may be released now or in the future. And there's been a seeming knock-on effect with albums themselves: They've been getting noticeably shorter for the last 10 years or so. That makes sense: The '00s have been the Incredible Shrinking Decade, from the reduction of newspaper and magazine word counts to digital media becoming more hand-holdable to the internet's reduction of any number of boundaries. Albums are now seemingly just as long as artists care to make them—a noticeable difference from the CD era, during which albums seemed to be as long as artists could make them.

Dave Segal talks to Night Beats:

The duo share one of those telepathic/ soul-mate bonds that rarely materializes in groups. Both are in their early 20s, but their influences reflect a preference for artists of their parents' era: Otis Redding, the Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Magic Sam, the Doors, and 13th Floor Elevators. That being said, Rajan and Traeger do admit to being fans of contemporary revivalists such as the White Stripes, the Black Angels, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and the Black Keys (sadly, White Rainbow and Black Dice didn't make the cut).

Rajan left Dallas because, he says, the city "was a wasteland of music." He chose Seattle because "I wanted to find a city where there's a music scene that I knew about. It seems like everybody goes to Austin, but I wanted to go to Seattle. In Austin, there are a lot of people riding the coattails of things going on there. Up here, you can make something new. It's ripe to be taken over."

Up & Coming has your nightlift covered with shows and parties to attend, like the KEXP BBQ with Dinosaur Jr:

(Mural Amphitheatre, Seattle Center) Man, I can't recall there being this many good summer shows at the Mural Amphitheatre since the old days of Pain in the Grass. Good times. And today's KEXP BBQ is another great lineup. Dinosaur Jr.'s latest, Farm (amazing bad/good cover art, btw), doesn't rival the band's noisy best, but it's a fine album, the sound of three veteran musicians well over their past feuds and settling into some comfortable and still occasionally combustive jams out in the garage. Down the bill are Vancouver, BC, duo Japandroids, whose swelling, anthemic guitar and drum blasts sound sort of like a kinder, gentler Death from Above 1979 and whose songs ably balance shooting-for-the-hips rock grooves and reaching-for-the-sky sing-alongs. ERIC GRANDY

Fucking in the Streets on Peter Bjorn and John:

But even more likely is that openers Peter Bjorn and John will go down in the mass consciousness as only a one-off, on account of their eternally, infernally whistling slice of pop bliss from 2006, "Young Folks" (#110 U.S., #13 UK), which featured the Concretes' Victoria Bergsman singing in sweet duet with PB&J's namesake Peter Moren on the rapture of falling in love and feeling oblivious to the eyes of others, young and old. Nothing the band has done since has achieved the ubiquitous status of that single (though the band is fairly young yet), but if they are only remembered for "Young Folks," it'll be history's loss. Writer's Block, the album that spawned "Young Folks," is pretty much wall-to-wall pop hooks. Even this year's lesser follow-up, Living Thing (which underwhelmed upon first listen), turns out to be full of unlikely yet effectively catchy tunes—the delightfully foul-mouthed kiss-off "Lay It Down," the Graceland-aping title track—as well as a number of songs that just add a little more space to the band's slightly groovy sound ("It Don't Move Me," "Just the Past," "I Want You!").

Catch up on the new releases from Ben Kweller, Muse, and others in It's a Hit:

"Fight"
by Ben Kweller
(ATO)

A pseudo country song that expresses its bland sentiment ("You've got to set your sight on the Lord in your life/You've got to fight till your dying day") with some genuine enthusiasm; it even devotes its first verse to a trucker, just to be completely shameless about it. Makes me wonder what some actual Nashville dude (or nondude) might do with it—probably a lot more.

Data Breaker previews Amon Tobin:

Brazilian-Anglo Amon Tobin has built a stellar rep over seven albums (including the triphop classic Adventures in Foam as Cujo) for darkly surreal electronic music that threads drum 'n' bass, samba, hiphop, exotica, and ambient into distinctive, disorienting fusions. His tracks can shift from friskily festive to damned disturbing in the tap of an MPC pad. He later, inevitably, delved into video-game-, soundtrack-, and field-recording-oriented works with Chaos Theory - Splinter Cell 3 Soundtrack and Foley Room. Tobin's most recent project, Two Fingers, finds him working with Joe "Doubleclick" Chapman and rapid-cadenced MC Sway to forge a ruggedly skewed take on grime and dubstep.

Larry Mizell Jr on Blue Scholars:

OOF! That could damn well have been your reaction to walking outside into the record-breaking heat or to the screaming blue bastards flying over your crib here last week in Seatown—but it's also the name of the upcoming EP from local heroes Blue Scholars. Having parted ways with Rawkus, Geo and Sabzi are releasing OOF! (due August 25) and a yet-to-be-named full-length (due next year), and rereleasing Bayani through an ingenious partnership with local coffee-roaster Caffe Vita and iconic New York hiphop label Duck Down Records. "With the record industry in flux, conditions are ripe for an alternative," Geologic writes in their sharply penned press release. "One where the artist, rather than becoming an employee of a label or sponsor, contracts the label and sponsors to do work for them. Everybody still gets a check. But it's a relationship where the artists (and their handpicked 'team') not only have creative freedom but economic power."

Christopher DeLaurenti on The Ring:

Key players in Seattle Opera's 2005 Ring cast return this summer: The stunning Stephanie Blythe and Margaret Jane Wray reprise their respective roles as Fricka and Sieglinde. Let's hope Greer Grimsley, who occasionally sounded underpowered in the 2005 Ring, has aged well and acquired more bottom end to sing Wotan, ruler of the gods. In lieu of Jane Eaglen, I'm betting that Janice Baird, who raged and fulminated as Seattle Opera's Elektra last fall, will be a riveting Brünnhilde. Blessed with a strong, pining heldentenor, Stig Fogh Andersen debuts here as the irrepressible man-child Siegfried.

Megan Seling on upstarts Koalacaust:

And the award for Best Band Name Ever (or at least of the week) goes to... Koalacaust! I know, making light of the Holocaust is generally frowned upon, but Koalacaust is just cute. And the band ain't bad, either. They come from California, they play delightfully sloppy basement pop songs, and they often use an accordion.

If that sounds like a fine time to you, the cuddly/crass quintet are playing a show at Squid & Ink in Georgetown this Saturday, August 8. Opening is local beardo Jason Clackley, a former Bremerton resident who's done time in bands like the Flex and Valley of the Dinosaurs.

Party Crasher goes to the South Beach! Check out Poster of the Week! For more music happenings, live concerts and DJs, take a look at our searchable music calendar.

Count off the 12 Best Songs by Throw Me the Statue with Christopher Frizzelle and Eric Grandy:

1. "Lolita"

Throw Me the Statue's most well-known song is a great example of what the band does best: It's immediately a pop song, its melodies and arrangements (heavy on strummed acoustic guitar and rolling, hand-clap-happy backbeats) inviting and catchy, but it's also slightly obscure. Those arrangements are deceptively crafted, from the first drum-machine pattern to the final hectic chorus; its subject isn't so much an object of infatuation (a girl) as it is the feeling of infatuation itself ("the hunger"); and songwriter Scott Reitherman's best lyrics are just slightly off ("I wanna make you lose your brain," "I got the bullets in my head/And she asks me why I came," "She was 19/And we all rearrange," the lonely, unlikely chorus "Every night I pray/She comes around my house to stay").

Dave Segal talks to Talbot Tagora about no-wave and post-punk:

The group's members—Ani Ricci (drums), Chris Ando (guitar, vocals), and Mark Greshowak (guitar, bass, vocals)—are still in their late teens/early 20s. But their sound—all tense atmospheres, scathing yet tuneful guitars, declamatory vocals, concise durations—harks back to an era before they were born, specifically the post-punk and no-wave movements (including Sonic Youth's earliest phase) that flourished around the time their automotive namesake was floundering.

"We are fans of bands that fit under that timeline," Ando says by e-mail while Talbot Tagora are on tour with Abe Vigoda. "So it probably subliminally bleeds into our songwriting. It's not intentional. We're interested in that era because it seemed that a lot of those bands had political purpose behind their art. A lot of art inspires us, though—atmospheres, too."

Check out this week's notable shows in Up & Coming, like tomorrow's performance by the Saturday Knights:

(EMP) For a moment there, it looked like the Saturday Knights were going to be the bona fide Next Big Thing (or, if you prefer, Wave) in Seattle hiphop—skillful as they are playful, rock-friendly as they are rap-credible, the group seemed poised to wholly dominate 2008. That they didn't quite, that they've been just one great Seattle hiphop success story among many in the past year, is more a credit to the overwhelming amount of talent in this town right now than it is a slight to the Knights. TSK can still rock a party with the best of them, with MCs Tilson and Barfly spitting, respectively, amiable but alpha-wolfing game and drunken mastery while DJ Suspence cuts beats and spikes mics behind them, often bolstered by an extra hand on guitar or drums. Any chance to get some actual live music shaking the staid (if abstract) halls of the EMP is a good thing, and the Saturday Knights are the perfect band to do it while Jim Henson's Muppets are on display (check their Sesame Street cred on the video for "Count It Off"). ERIC GRANDY

Fucking in the Streets recaps the Capitol Hill Block Party:

The biggest surprise of the weekend was Micachu & the Shapes, an arty, lo-fi London trio about whom many of my peers were raving, but whose debut album, Jewellery, had left me cold. As I approached the stage, I thought the band's set was just going to confirm my antipathy. It sounded like droney, half-formed art-school shenanigans (and I like art-school shenanigans) with just a hint of R&B buried alive underneath. But then they played a song that was all rim-shot click, bass groove, and digital ringing percussion, and it sounded great—drone as pop, the R&B clawing its way up to the surface of the song (something about "old debris," maybe?). The song ended in an epic thrash, and then there was another groovy number that spiked into noise at the end. I may have to revisit that record.

Read about this week's latest singles and releases in It's a Hit:

"Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up"
by DJ Morgoth (MP3)

Early in the decade, I was a sucker for blends, or mashups, or A-plus-B mixes, or stupid gimmicks, or whatever you wanted to call them. Then they all started to suck, and I stopped caring. So part of the shock of this marvelous piece of work isn't just that Germany's DJ Morgoth managed to fuse two of the most horribly obvious records ever made—Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"—into a brilliant whole. It's that (a) no one had done it before, even back when it seemed like this sort of thing was what everyone was doing, and (b) anyone could make something this good in that vein again, something that hits so giddy and hard.

Data Breaker on local drone and noise composers:

Let us take a break this week from the ecstatic tyranny of beats and immerse ourselves in the briny whirlpool of drones. Thankfully, there's a bill happening at the Josephine on Wednesday, August 5, that's a beggars banquet of electronic abstract expressionism. A good drone has the ability to be a mental palate cleanser, a salubrious aural cushion on which one can meditate like a motherfucker, and a springboard for cerebral calisthenics—assuming you don't have the attention span of a sugared-up kindergartner.

Let's begin with Portland's Pulse Emitter (Daryl Groetsch and his modular synthesizer). In his compositions, he cultivates an aura of ascetic mysticism/lunar desolation with sputtering-motor bass hums and ripples, and glinting, curvilinear tone smears. "Meditative Music," oddly enough, is just that, although not in any standard new-age manner; rather, it soothes in a "we're cruising eight miles high" way, while "Charlemagne Palestine" presses a stubby finger on a black key on the far right side of the organ.

Larry Mizell Jr reviews BattleCat in My Philosophy:

BattleCat—the producer, not He-Man's mount—is simply one of the illest producers from the West Coast (thus, anywhere) ever. From the school of squealing, squelchy-smooth G-funk, yet totally original, BattleCat is the guy behind some of my favorite post—Death Row West-Coast jams—"G'd Up" by Tha Eastsidaz comes to mind. "Cat is one of those rare guys who has dominated with a sound all his own," says premier Seattle producer (and Big Tune mainstay) Jake One. "West Coast rap needs him in a bad way right now."

Christopher DeLaurenti on the exploitation of Bill Anschell:

Last month, the local chapter of a nationally known charitable group asked me to recommend a jazz musician who could "donate time and talent" for a benefit dessert auction. Is any other profession expected to devalue its work as often? Veteran musicians lament such gigs as "freebies." Depending on my mood, I prefer "unwitting exploitation" or, in this case, what self-help gurus call "a teaching moment."

Amid the bounty of Seattle musicians, I thought of pianist Bill Anschell, whose recent disc We Couldn't Agree More (Origin) captures a daring series of duets with saxophonist Brent Jensen. I marvel at Anschell's near-telepathic rapport with Jensen and how they blithely hopscotch from the frenetic free improvisation of "The People Versus Miss Jones" to a sly, Monk-ish take on the Miles Davis standard "Solar." Anschell told me once, "It's all about getting into each other's heads."

Megan Seling on Shook Ones in Underage:

Because I (not so) secretly yearn to be 18 years old, my soundtrack for the summer is as loud, fast, and posi as possible. I'm listening to a lot of older stuff like Smoke or Fire, Latterman, and Screeching Weasel, and to keep things up-to-date, I've also thrown the new Shook Ones record, The Unquotable A.M.H., into the playlist. You know, to see how it stands up to some of the classics.

Clocking in at just 30 minutes, Unquotable is their best record yet—it gives some of their forefathers a run for their money (Lifetime, I'm looking at you) and proves that pop punk is still alive and kicking a double bass drum... and not just because Blink-182 are back.

This week, Party Crasher rubs elbows with literature enthusiasts over crab cakes! Also check out the newest Poster of the Week! For more music events, shows, DJs and parties, check out our searchable online music calendar.

Some commenters gave me grief for griping about Sonic Youth's emphasis on their newest album at the Block Party performance (10 of the set's 14 songs came from The Eternal). But some veteran musicians understand the appeal of traversing (most of) their entire catalog during a show that happens late in their careers. One such musician is Pixies frontman Black Francis, who plays Triple Door Sun. Aug. 2.

Below, BF explicates his approach to live performance.

My name is Black Francis (sometimes known as Frank Black). Listed below are the main releases I have been associated with to date. While performing solo or with a band I will play selections from most of these releases. Of course, some releases are better known than others, and in true show biz fashion I will usually perform several selections from my "A" list, but I will not perform medleys. And I generally do not perform so called encores, because I have always found this show biz mechanism (now it is a mechanism) to be overused and as a result lacking in the drama that perhaps occurred in the encores of yesteryear; plus, shouldn't an encore be a repeat performance of some selection that has already taken place earlier in the concert? I think some people would be confused if I repeated a song for an encore.

For some artists the live performance is the chicken before the egg of writing or recording of repertoire. For other artists the writing or recording of repertoire is the chicken before the egg of live performance. For other artists still there is the feeling that the live performance or the writing or recording of repertoire is that EGG which comes first. I am one of those artists who cannot remember which came first: the chicken or the egg? I can remember back as far as age 8 performing with the Boston Folk Song Society. It was a Woody Guthrie song.

why oh why oh why oh why?
why oh why oh why?
because because because because because because because

But what came before that? I cannot remember. I have always been a singer, a writer, and a musician, not as a prodigy or as in a trade handed to me by my parents, but because of an inner voice or maybe a command from beyond reality as it is usually defined. Some have called we rock and roll performers who never retire troubadours. I enjoy this misnomer immensely. While there are many differences between me and my distant predecessors in L'Occitane I do believe there is a lineage that connects us of the last 70 years with those romantic singers of the High Middle Ages.

1987 COME ON PILGRIM
1988 SURFER ROSA
1989 DOOLITTLE
1990 BOSSANOVA
1991 TROMPE LE MONDE
1993 FRANK BLACK
1994 TEENAGER OF THE YEAR
1996 THE CULT OF RAY
1998 FRANK BLACK AND THE CATHOLICS
1999 PISTOLERO
2000 DOG IN THE SAND
2002 BLACK LETTER DAYS
2002 DEVIL'S WORKSHOP
2003 SHOW ME YOUR TEARS
2004 FRANK BLACK FRANCIS
2005 HONEYCOMB
2006 FAST MAN RAIDER MAN
2006 CHRISTMASS
2007 BLUEFINGER
2008 SVN FNGRS
2009 PETITS FOURS
2009 THE GOLEM (soon to be released)

In this week's Party Crasher, Paul Constant kicks it with nerds:

You can always tell if you're at a book party when you can't get away from the passionate, nerdy discussion. One woman threatens to stop talking to another partyer because of a humbly admitted distaste for Jane Austen. Exasperated, she digs further into the Austen-hater's tastes: "She says she likes the Brontës, but she hates Jane Eyre!" When someone shits all over Middlemarch a few minutes later, we all half-expect her head to explode.

Party Crasher is always looking for more parties to crash. Email partycrasher@thestranger.com.