These guys are one of my favorite metal bands that's currently touring. They'll be here on December 11th and you can bet there will be goat horns in the air.

• Canary Sing jumps.

College girls Madeleine Clifford and Hollis Wong-Wear are smart chicks. Even the name of their group— Canary Sing— is smart; referencing the canary in the coal mine, referencing a book called Caucasia that left elemeno imprints on my mind.

The first time I saw Canary Sing was an accident; I was technically at the Rendezvous to check out THEESatisfaction, whom everybody was telling me I would love. Everybody was right for a change, but nobody seemed to know yet that Canary Sing could inspire equal passion. Rapping straight-forwardly over beats both obvious and left field (was that a sample from the musical Hair?), Madeleine and Hollis have distinct voices, conscious lyrics and hip hop skills that divulge their spoken word backgrounds. (Hollis speaks of the "space needle scratching at the vinyl of the sky.")

So what does all this have to do with cheap dates? Canary Sing are playing a free, all ages show at Throwbacks tomorrow, November 14th at 4pm. Get your broke ass there.

Noticed while scanning Other Music’s weekly mailout (the accompanying write-up's below):

SCROTUM POLES
Auchmithie Forever
(Dul-ci-Tone)
Finally! Amazing compilation of unreleased stuff (their sole 7" is not included...huh?) by this British '70s DIY punk/pop band. Essential for fans of TVPs, Homosexuals, Desperate Bicycles, etc. Vinyl only, natch.

Scrotum Poles?! Ouch. My groin flinches just reading that.

As for the music? Eh. It's gray, featherlight, lo-fi pop that won't keep Bob Pollard, Lou Barlow, or Ariel Pink up at night. But, you know, Scrotum Poles. Well, it got me to blog about them 30 years after their "heyday," so respect to them.

Image from Scrotum Poles' MySpace.

It wouldn't surprise me if Sam Mickens' Ecstatic Showband & Revue attained a Mayer Hawthorne-like level of success. Their frontman has the sort of charisma, vocal suppleness, and matinee-idol looks to pull it off.

Congrats to Seattle foursome the Shackles for getting their "Broken Arm" 7" (on Vancouver's Sweet Rot Records) reviewed by the estimable Byron Coley in The Wire's Size Matters column last month (sorry for just noticing this now).

The band's lineup consists of Carlos Lopez, Jim Herman, Ruben Mendez (Coconut Coolouts), and Cathy Lopez. Brian Standridge (Dutchess & the Duke, Suspicions) produced the single at Magical Basement Studio.

The Shackles' scrappy, low-budget pop delivers a sugary yet nutritious rush akin to early Guided by Voices and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments. It's not easy to make this narrow niche of indie rock sound vital in 2009, but the Shackles succeed.

The first show took place at the Echoplex on Friday, where Yorke and band performed his 2006 solo album, The Eraser, in its entirety before Yorke sat at the piano and played four new songs solo. They moved the show over to the Orpheum Theatre on Sunday, where they will perform again tonight.

Paintings for Animals performs with Sokai Stilhed, New Red Sun, Groves, and Thunder Grey Pilgrim at the Josephine Thurs. Oct. 1.

Chop Suey
$15adv/$dos
8pm Doors / All Ages / Bar w/ID

Their current tour doesn't include a Seattle date, but if you read this, Geronimo, please consider hitting us on your next jaunt.

ht: @ptgrw via Twitter

Totally recorded using ancient analogue equipment. With Mum and Dad backing up the kids.

Brilliant.

Try and watch this documentary about them and not be charmed to pieces.

Read Sup Pop's blurb on the band, where they're already being hated on by anonymous commenters (almost always a good sign), here.

In this week's paper, I write about Gossip, one of the many great bands playing the Capitol Hill Block Party this weekend.

About Music for Men, Gossip's new, Rick Rubin-produced major-label debut, I wrote:

Here is the great racket of Gossip boiled down to radio-ready form, and if this strikes you as nothing more than a sellout, please direct your attention to the adamantly out, plus-sized lesbian doing the selling. Pop's never been a dirty thing to Gossip—see the band's live covers of Wham! and Aaliyah—and Ditto can do far more important work hollering in the pop arena than screeching to the converted in the underground.

But before I turned in the piece, I bounced the theory off the biggest Gossip fan I know, former Stranger employee/beloved Seattle scenester Ari Spool, who'd loved the band since its inception, and to whom I sent this email:

I have a question for you, for something that I'm writing about the new Gossip album. My take: It's a big, brave, and powerful pop album, by what used to be a punk band with pop ambitions but is now a pop band with punk elements. I'M TOTALLY FINE WITH THIS! But here's my question, for you as a longtime, ground-zero Gossip fan: Does such a turn to "just pop" feel like a betrayal? Did Beth/the band ever explicitly aspire to serious political artistry, or were any such expectations just foisted on them by their post-riot grrl/Olympia connections?

Ari promptly responded with a wonderful and enlightening burst of text:

I think that Beth Ditto as a person has laid claim to those rigid politics, and has always been and will always be loud, brassy, and opinionated. She was like that before Oly, even. That's why she left Arkansas, but it also completely reflects the Southern Attitude that she embodies.

She hasn't been in Arkansas for a long time. Arkansas, to a big fat lesbian, is probably a place that makes you want to scream (I've never been, so this is an assumption). Beth Ditto has been among her people (liberals, lesbians, etc) for a long time now, and she is doing well financially and famous to boot. Punk always needs the fire inside. You have to hate something for that shit to mean anything, no matter if you are being funny when you hate it or what. On the new album, you are right, she's not screaming anymore, even when she's being wronged. "Love Long Distance" would be a lot more moving if she did, I think. But don't think this has changed her politics, particularly, because politics are something that you fight for forever, but I believe this has mellowed her out a bit musically. Hence, pop.

I'm not sure anyone so authentically politically radical has been in the public eye since Kurt Cobain, and I still maintain that if anything, he was too quiet about what he really thought, if he was even sure about his convictions.

Plus, the cover of the album is so indicative of their thoughts to me. Hannah! Not Beth, Hannah! Beth, because of her big ol' mouth and lead singer status, is so so so public. But the politics that Beth is propagating are not just about fat girls, which is where the media has been plugging her as late. They are actually about being gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay! GAY GAY GAY GAY

GAY.

I think that's where they're trying to go. Staying gay. Gay is where they came from, not radical punk stuff. Punk was gay again a few years ago, but gay is all about dance again these days. [this whole idea totally needs a bigger exploration. why is punk not as gay right now? why is it all about dance again? is this my feeling because i'm in NY? i feel like it's been going this way for a while, though.]

That's all. I think. Plus, I always thought the Gossip were going for Soul, but couldn't do it b/c they were white.

I heart Ari Spool.

There's something about music from psychedelia's first flush that sounds so righteous in the summer. July in July—sometimes the obvious move is the best one to make.

See it big here.