Summer’s almost gone. And while that obscene yellow ball of gaseous flame in the sky doesn’t feel like slinking away just yet (here in Seattle, at least), it doesn’t have a habit of sticking around much past the first week of September. That lends some urgency to these recommendations, as all of them have made…
Summer really is high time for Breaks and Swells. The Seattle band’s been bringing the breezy grooves since 2013, crafting jazz-tinged, airy soul just made for these dog days. On the face of it, “We Will Not Despair,” the fab title track from the band’s newest full-length, fits neatly into the playful sonic vibe that’s…
Conventional wisdom states that you shouldn’t write a review about a concert more than a week after you’ve seen it. I respectfully submit a formal proposal to screw that noise. A few weekends ago, I saw two childhood heroes of mine—musicians whose work is practically part of my DNA—play live. Something that significant is worth…
The striking Frank Correa cover art for Sense of Us, the new release from Seattle electronica artist Vox Mod, depicts dual images of the musician (born Scot Porter) nude in a yin yang/fetal position, in the center of a tableau that’s somewhere between a coral reef and a psychedelic cellular organism. It’s an apt visual…
News flash (not): This country’s pretty fucked right now. And maddeningly enough, that deeply profound state of fuckery is rooted in the elemental fact that even ideals that we hold to be self-evident can be yanked out from under us if we’re not vigilant. The most ostensibly obvious tenets of our country, the things that…
Every month, our own Aaron Roden delivers some great one-on-one conversations with musicians on his Artist Home Podcast. But with the seventh episode, he’s done something different—and pretty amazing. The OK Hotel was one of Seattle’s pivotal music venues from roughly 1987 until the Nisqually Earthquake damaged the building beyond salvation in 2001. The scrappy…
I’ve been navigating the sonic labyrinth that is Quazarz vs. the Jealous Machines and Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star, the two-disc opus from hip-hop futurists Shabazz Palaces, for two months straight now. And in a lot of ways, I’m still happily lost in the damn…
The full-on 10-song-or-longer recorded album is for, all intents and purposes, an anachronism in a world where our rapidly-eroding attention spans demand instant gratification from music. But while the format is on the ropes, it’s not down for the count yet. I’d be the last to deny the elemental power of a great three-minute pop song….
Without going into tedious detail, I spent the last couple of weeks of summer nursing a hearty dose of depression, thanks to blind fate forcing me to stare hard at my mortality (long, dull story). The incident stirred within me the dispiriting notion that life is a mundane descent into nothingness, and that every…
Over the course of six years and three albums, singer/songwriter/guitarist Leeni Ramadan has crafted a distinctive musical universe with her band Prom Queen. It’s an environment where Brill Building girl-group pop, surf rock, exotica music, and Patsy Cline country share space—a place where jet-black humor, kitsch, and haunted obsession intermingle like spirals of cigarette smoke….
Conor Byrne, that beloved Ballard pub normally informed by folk and Americana, becomes a hotbed of noir-informed musical intrigue Friday night. Seattle band Hotels takes to the stage, and I won’t mince words: You really should go. Night Showers, the most recent release from the band, wound up being one of my most cherished album…
Limbo’s Daughter by Tomten There’s something about hearing a great pop single in the flush of a gorgeous summer day that can crystalize every gold-tinted summertime moment you’ve ever experienced into three or four minutes of sustained bliss. The latest perfect summertime pop song to gently but inexorably insinuate its way into the mixtape that…
