Guy Keltner and Ian Cunningham are busy guys. As co-founders (with Skyler Locatelli) of Freakout Records, they boast one of the best stables of artists at a local indie label. By extent, that means they’ve also had a strong hand in unleashing the label’s successful Freakout Festival, an annual hullabaloo that showcases a consistently terrific…
If I’da heard Zzyxz, the latest full-length from local psych-rock vets Low Hums, closer to its November 2019 release, it might well have found its way into my PNW 2019 Top Ten. It’s that good. Any fan of forward-thinking psychedelic rock will find myriad itches scratched by Zzyxz, big-time. Garage-pop infectiousness (the gloriously heavy and…
As is reassuringly consistent and expected, a tassel of great music’s been generated by PNW bands over the last (almost-) 12 months, and we here at Artist Home have been privy to an awful lot of it. Below please find my Ten Favorite Northwest Albums of 2019. As always, I’ve opted to acknowledge full-length releases…
Anyone who visits this corner of interwebs knows That we’re big Lemolo fans. So Artist Home is proud to premiere “South of Sound,” the second clip off of the band’s new album, Swansea. One of Swansea’s best tracks, ”South of Sound” Is a textbook example of Lemolo singer/songwriter Meagan Grandall’s knack for threading unease and…
Ben London has been a presence in the Seattle music scene for a couple of decades, both as a musician and in music industry positions with MoPOP, The Grammys, and Hewlett Packard among others. So he knows about the sometimes rocky road traveled by Seattle creatives. To that end, he’s helping bring Black Fret, a successful musician-focused…
Singer/songwriter Stephanie Anne Johnson is proudly Tacoma-born and bred, and there’s something about her songs and voice that reflect that, in the best possible way. In contrast to the airs of pretense that its sibling to the North—Seattle—often puts on, Tacoma’s a scrappier, more blue-collar, and much less pretentious place. Tacomans have no problem keeping…
We’re big fans of Bodies on the Beach, the Planes on Paper side project whose bang-up single, “Ghost,” premiered here back in September. The band is now celebrating the release of the entire (terrific) Ghost EP with a special release party at The Crocodile, and it’s definitely going to be something unique. In lieu of…
When I discover an amazing record, I’m prone to want to deep-dive. Immediately after immersing myself in it, I try to capture in words why the hell said record is worth someone’s time. In the end, that’s exactly what most music writing comes down to. Sometimes, though, that kind of dissection is the rock-writer equivalent…
So it’s two days from Halloween. You’ve got a costume. You’ve got the urge to cavort with monsters, demons, and revelers at every level of debauchery known to man. And you want to hear some music. Long story short, there are plenty of ways to fill your musical trick-or-treat bag in this neck of the…
Meagan Grandall, lead singer/songwriter/leader of PNW band Lemolo, has spent nearly a decade recording music that’s equal parts intimate and expansive. Her lyrics and bell-clear voice are as emotionally vulnerable and naked as the most introspective folk singer’s. But the sonic canvas on which she paints is ethereal pop, rife with texture and a sense…
For 20 years now, Seattle’s Degenerate Art Ensemble has created performance pieces that combine modern dance, Butoh theatrics, avant-garde free-jazz-tinted music, kinetic sculpture, and experimental video. So when the two founders of DAE—vocalist/songwriter Haruko Crow Nishimura and composer/guitarist Joshua Kohl—formed their band Skeleton Flower, it was a fair bet that the sounds would boast as…
Somewhere around the middle of the eighties, pop evolved from the synthesized sparseness of Kraftwerk, early OMD and Depeche Mode, into a glossier, bigger style that was, in its own way, distinctly American. Production became bigger and more epic, with keyboard hooks of Sistine Chapel-level spectacle and sparkle, gated and mechanized drums, and hooks that…
