Yep, summer is officially over -- the air is crisp, and those sunny, crowded thoughts of festival season are long past. However, smack in the middle of October is City Arts Fest 2012, bringing you one last hurrah of all the local bands and cool national acts that it's able to pack into four days. Not only is there music to be enjoyed, but there's also the super awesome Culture Club, showcasing art and after parties to make your nights (and some days, too) as fully wonderful as possible. Here are some of my personal picks for you to keep in mind as you head into the fest:

Wednesday

David Byrne and St. Vincent are the big draw for Wednesday, and with good reason. The spacey, horn-heavy album Love This Giant is a collaboration that only could be conceived (and executed) by this pair, and I'm eager to hear it live -- I've been told the horn section is particularly spectacular. Post Byrne / Vincent, just in case you haven't gotten your fill, you can hit up the David Byrne After Party at the Culture Club -- or, try something different and head up to Barboza to catch Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band at 11:15.

8:30-10:30 David Byrne & St. Vincent, 5th Ave Theater
10:00-midnight David Byrne After Party, Culture Club
11:15-12:15 Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, Barboza

Runner-up choices for Wednesday: Jonathan Russell (The Head and the Heart) and Kevin Murphy (The Moondoggies), All Pilgrims Church; Grynch, Neumos; Pollens, Barboza

Thursday

Thursday is a tough day, as there are a lot of great bands playing and really not enough time to fit them all in. Song Sparrow Research and Throw Me the Statue are my two top picks for the night, and having never seen Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground before, I've decided to stay at the Crocodile to check out their psychedelic pop sounds. Following all of that up with a set from Gold Leaves will make it an awesome Thursday night.

8:00-8:30 Song Sparrow Research, Barboza
8:45-9:30 Throw Me the Statue, Crocodile
9:45-10:30 Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, Crocodile
10:30-12:00 Gold Leaves, Crocodile

Also worth making time for on Thursday: Tomten, Crocodile; Lemolo (with Slang!), Triple Door; Legendary Oaks, Vince Mira and the Dusty 45s, Barboza; The Physics and Mos Def, Showbox Sodo; Joshua Radin and A Fine Frenzy, 5th Ave Theater

Friday

There's a few Unofficial Happy Hour Showcases which start Wednesday but, if you can only pick one, Friday's is the one to catch. Produced by Treefort Music Fest, the Crocodile will be featuring Hot Bodies in Motion, Finn Riggins, Learning Team, and And And And from 5:30-7:00. After the showcase you can walk right over to the Rendezvous for Case Studies, followed by Land of Pines back at the Crocodile, and then one more trip back to the Rendezvous for Tiny Vipers. Finish out your night at Showbox at the Market with Blind Pilot and Pt. Juncture, WA.

8:15-9:00 Case Studies, Rendezvous
8:45-9:30 Land of Pines, Crocodile
10:30-11:00 Pt. Juncture, WA, Showbox Market
11:15-12:30 Blind Pilot, Showbox Market

More killer picks for Friday: Reignwolf, Laserdome; Howlin' Rain, Barboza; Ghostland Observatory, Showbox Sodo; Fresh Espresso, Neumos; Ravenna Woods, Crocodile

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You remember Heligoats, right? Of course you do: sweet, Bellingham-spun, beautifully delirious frontman of the band Chris Otepka was kind enough to grace us with his presence with a solo performance at our Imaginary Holiday Spectacular last year. Tonight, he's bringing the whole band out at the Comet Tavern {yep, tonight-tonight, Thursday the 27th} and you're all invited. All of you!

Go listen to Fishsticks on the band's Facebook page, or take a spin or two around any of the albums he's got on the internet, or listen to the Tiny Desk concert he did a bit ago on NPR:

or play this video from one of his old bands:

and seriously tell me you're not going to come to the show tonight.

{21+ / cheap / be there. Heligoats is second on the four-band bill. Photo of Chris Otepka by Victoria VanBruinisse.}

For their fifth full-length album, Moms, Portland’s Menomena underwent a significant lineup change: front man and multi-instrumentalist Brent Knopf left the group in January of 2011 to focus on his own project, Ramona Falls. Thankfully, the remaining members of the band -- bassist and saxophonist Justin Harris and drummer Danny Seim -- are not short on talent in their own right. Friends since high school, the pair simply kept the band together as a two-piece, and the result is an album that proves to be Menomena’s most lyrically intense and earnest work yet, and also one of their best.

While the sound of the band occasionally argued and feuded as a three-piece, now that they are down to two, the decision making process has been refined and by all accounts, it appears as though the recording of Moms was very collaborative and productive. The songwriting and singing duties for the ten tracks are now split evenly between the two members; with Harris and Seim taking the lead singing role on five tracks each, even alternating back and forth from track to track.

The most striking development on Moms is the straightforward (and at times downright dark) lyrical moments on the album, which is often seemingly directed at their upbringing and family dynamic. Seim’s mother died when he was young, and Harris was raised by his mother after his Vietnam-veteran father walked out on the family when he was still a teenager. A strong example is this line from the Harris sung “Pique”, where he sings: Now I’m a failure / cursed with male genitalia / a parasitic fuck / with no clue as to what men do / impossible to love. On “Heavy Is As Heavy Does” Harris touches on a multitude of topics including family (Heavy are the branches / hanging from my fucked up family tree), religion (I’m not one for religion / but I can’t seem to shake this imagery) and relationships (Among six billion people / I want the ones who never wanted me).

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I'm still recovering from the long week of bands, venues, and seemingly endless late-night photo edits, however: I wouldn't change one thing about my stay in Portland. Musicfest NW is the stamp at the end of a summer of festivals and they packed their lineup with some amazing bands. My schedule kept changing up until the day of shows, so I just decided that I was going to see bands I hadn't seen before and that worked out pretty well. The weather was perfect, if not a little on the hot side -- but for the last festival before fall, I didn't mind having to stand in the sun for the two or so hours before it set. So, without further ado: here are my highs from the shows I was able to catch during MFNW 2012.

I had to keep it pretty low key for Wednesday. After a day of bus travel and running around after arriving in Portland, I decided to stick to the Crystal Ballroom (my hotel was across the street) and I absolutely made the right choice. LP was brilliant, her voice alone cuts through the room with as much emotion as one could possibly imagine, and in every conceivable way produced one of those amazing, uplifting sets where all you want to do when you get home is listen to the album over and over again.

Headlining the night was Passion Pit, and I thought to myself, what better way to get introduced to this band than to see them live? It was high energy, Michael Angelakos running from one side of the stage to the other; the crowd was phenomenal: jumping, dancing, singing. Passion Pit was the perfect electro-dance heavy-pop band I needed to kickstart me into the fest.

Thursday was the toughest day to decide whom to see. Do I venue hop? Don't I? It was a tough call. I finally decided that after missing every possible chance to see him in Seattle, my only certainty that day was to catch Reignwolf play the Roseland Theater. Every review I read up until this show had one thing in common: that the performance was absolutely mindblowing, and they are all telling the truth. My mind was blown from that first puff of fog from the fog machine to the last guitar solo. I was complete putty in the hands of Reignwolf! And as if it wasn't enough to play drums and guitar simultaneously, he then gives us a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain". Geez!

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So far, the self-titled first full-length from Poor Moon hasn’t received as much notice as some other Fleet Foxes-related acts, but that is certainly no fault of its own: on Poor Moon, deceptively simple arrangements of lilting vocal melodies and folksy instruments float just above preciousness in a macramé hammock.

Containing sounds drawn out of every aisle of a vintage record store – from Neil Young to barefoot, school bus-dwelling hippies and long-forgotten glossier pop groups – Poor Moon unsurprisingly bears a lot of resemblance to Fleet Foxes, especially on album closer “Birds.” If we're going to generalize, for the most part, this side project is Fleet Foxes shorn of their more experimental and psychedelic elements. I could forgive you for considering Poor Moon to be Fleet Foxes declawed, but I couldn't agree. For my money, the restrained elegance of Poor Moon is exquisite.

You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Poor Moon will be playing at Neumos with Tom Eddy + Pollens on September 20. Tickets are only $12, but if you’re feeling lucky enough, you might get in for free! Just shoot us an email at tig {at} threeimaginarygirls {dot} com with the subject "SendMeToPoorMoon" anytime between now and 2pm on Monday, September 17. We'll choose a winner Monday afternoon, and send you an email letting you know that you (and your choice of +1) are on the list for Thursday's show.

Good luck!

{Neumos / 21+ / $12 adv / 8pm doors. Tickets and more info available here. Photo credit: Kyle Johnson.}

What a killer weekend! It was so great, in fact, that it took me all week to (a) recover some semblance of time management skills and (b) sort through the nine zillion photos from three days of blood, sweat and booty-shakin'. Now that we're all back on track and gearing up for the weekend, let's take a look at all the fun we had: this year's Bumbershoot lined up a diverse range of sounds, collided with a killer forecast, and was packed to the gills with happy, band-loving fesitvalgoers (myself and a few other imaginary staffers included).

Here's a sliver of the bliss I was able to capture from some of my personal highlights from this year's festival, starting with the early Saturday groove-assault brought on by JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound -- complete with serious shout-outs to KEXP:

Sera Cahoone put on a gorgeous set at the Sub Pop stage -- there's lots of buzz around about her new album, out on SP later this month.

Have you ever been to a THEESatisfaction show? No? Let me sum it up for you: the whip-smart lyrics and undeniable beats that Stas and Cat dropped made for a non-stop bump-and-grind fest, punctuated only by realizations that I was in the presence of two people who manage to (somehow) simultaneously exude true greatness and absolute badassery. Were I able to stop shaking my ass for more than .02 seconds, I would have thrown my underwear at the stage. Yep. It was that kind of good:

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There's plenty to dig into at this year's Bumbershoot Music Festival outside of the big-draw acts (Gotye, anyone?) that make the daily ticket price well worth every hard-earned dollar you're going to spend. There's an impressive comedy lineup, KEXP's always-awesome "secret" Music Lounge, endless vendors, and the sunny goodness of the Seattle Center grounds -- and it all awaits us as another Labor Day weekend looms around the corner. You can head on over to the official Bumbershoot site to go over the schedule and fine-tune a personal lineup, of course -- but here's a few of our hot picks anyway, just in case you find yourself with a case of multi-stage overwhemsion.

SATURDAY

Bumbershoot kicks off strong this year with some feel-good bands breaking us in on our first day, like JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound (fingers crossed-times-infinity that they do their killer cover of "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart"), Sera Cahoone, and the Barr Brothers, still fresh in our mind from their performance at Pickathon. THEESatisfaction is sure to electro-groove our very souls before we get a good shredding from the Heartless Bastards, and later on we'll gladly close out day one with a bit of Jane's Addiction and M. Ward:

2:30p, Fisher Green Stage: JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound
3:30p, Sub Pop Stage (Fountain Lawn): Sera Cahoone
4:30p, The Promenade: Barr Brothers
5:15p, Sub Pop Stage: THEESatisfaction
5:45p, Starbucks Stage (Mural): Heartless Bastards
9:00p, The Promenade: Damien Jurado
9:30p, Mainstage (Key Arena): Jane's Addiction
9:45p, Fisher Green Stage: M. Ward

There's tons to do in that gap during the dinner hour, including the Stranger's Guide to America, grabbing actual dinner, checking out Flatstock, and seeking out one of a bazillion killer comedy acts before picking back up the tunes.

SUNDAY

Chugging along into day two, we'll gladly get take our wakeup call from Eighteen Individual Eyes (and a side of the-good-kind-of-bite from Katie Kate) before we ease into a mainstage set at Key Arena from Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings (hell yes!!). There's a run of favorites and Sub Pop all-stars through the afternoon, with blissy sets from the Young Evils, the Fruit Bats, and Mudhoney; and another day'll easily get knocked out of the park with a closing set from Wanda Jackson and those Dusty 45s:

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Whether the rest of the country takes notice or not, most of Seattle is already well aware of our burgeoning and ever-growing hip-hop scene. The past few years have shown it to grow in new and progressive directions, from the heart-on-sleeve, stadium anthems of Macklemore to the forward-thinking sounds of Shabazz Palaces, and everything in between. The Emerald City is loaded with talent -- and while the bulk of it is not only recognized but also facilitated, somehow, The Physics have somehow managed to slide a just a little bit under the radar. With their newest album Tomorrow People, they’re hoping to change all that.

It’s not that the Physics haven’t already been putting out great material: their 2011 album Love is a Business is an underrated gem from start to finish. Featuring some top-notch production work courtesy of Justo, Love is a Business oscillates between smooth R&B grooves and soul-sampling feel-good jams with the greatest of ease. And it keeps on coming -- in the lead-up to Tomorrow People’s release on August 25^th, the Physics have released two songs, “Days” (a nostalgic look back on their journey to get to this point, and the city that nurtured their growth thus far) and “Take a Win” (featuring production from Jake One). Thig Nat and Monk Wordsmith’s flows are as tight as ever, and you can get a sneak peak for yourself by clicking over to the band’s bandcamp page here. Tomorrow People also features guest appearances from fellow Seattle rapper and current world traveler Sol, as well as “King of Ballard”, Grynch.

If you want the best representation of what the Physics are all about, look no further than Love is a Business’ standout track “Coronas on Madrona”, which was my own personal I can’t stop listening to this song! jam from last summer. And take in all things new at The Physics' Tomorrow People album release show at Neumos on Saturday, August 25^th. Joining them are fellow Seattle hip-hop acts Brothers From Another, The Bar, and local producer extraordinaire Jake One. Don't miss out!

{Neumos / Saturday, August 25th / 8PM / $12 Adv / All Ages. More info and tickets here.}

{This is part two of our Pickathon 2012 coverage. Be sure to pop over here to catch the first half, with photos of Thee Oh Sees, Langhorne Slim, The Mynabirds, Bowerbirds, and more!}

Our second full day at Pickathon kicked off just right on Sunday, as we strolled onto the grounds around high noon to hear none other than Gordon Gano himself, along with the Lost Bayou Ramblers, blasting out fiddle-mod-ed Femmes favorites like "Blister in the Sun" and "Add It Up" out into the sunshiney, dusty heat. The crowd, artists, and media folks alike stood grinning and thrilled, and few steps to the right, the set bled right into a breezy yet energy-filled performance by Portland's Y La Bamba. We're going to go out on a limb and say it was {damn near} one of the finest festival start-off mornings in recent memory.

Y La Bamba:

After a bass-heavy jam sesh from The War On Drugs, indie scene crossover favorites Shovels and Rope were up, and like the Gordon Gano set, it was much to everyone's delight. There's a hell of a lot of quality sound that comes out of these two when they take the stage, as they fuse good old-fashioned songwriting with smart melodies, a strong vocal sensibility, and an infectious energy. Seattleites likely caught their set pre-Pickathon at the KEXP Concerts at the Mural series last Friday, but if you didn't, they're playing just about every day between now and September 1st in different pockets across the country. Click here to see if any of it is happening near you!

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It was an incredible inaugural experience for us at this year's Pickathon, the once-a-year celebration of all things indie roots (and indie, and roots) down on Pendarvis Farm in Happy Valley, Oregon. While, at times, the heat made the festival something to be endured, rather than out-and-out enjoyed -- temperatures broke 100 degrees on Saturday and hit the mid-90s on Sunday -- we still managed to have a blast.

Pickathon is just... different, something you have to see to experience. It's somehow simultaneously appealing to hipsters, hippies, families, and heads. The production of the festival itself is one of the most sustainable we've ever witnessed, with a token-for-dishware trade and "no single use" policy, exclusively local vendors and no corporate sponsorship. And the curation is so much more than just indie roots, with everyone from Gordon Gano to Langhorne Slim to Neko Case to Thee Oh Sees to THEESatisfaction taking the stages between banjo-picking sing- and stomp-a-longs. Pickathon really is one of those festivals that's stayed true to its roots while growing in size and popularity, free from car ads and jumbrotrons. We were all just up to our armpits in farm dirt, digging on tunes and having a hell of a time. And isn't that how it's supposed to be?

Here's a few photo highlights of our first day at the fest, Saturday (the weekend actually runs from Friday to Sunday). The Mynabirds were the first band to catch our ear in the main stage area, with their ethereal, jammy, layered sound. They fused their vibe with about two percent tent revival and a heaping side of synth-hipster for good measure, and it worked like a charm:

Next up, we caught a set by the Bowerbirds, who delivered pretty prog.indie folk songs. Worth noting: the band has a new album out as of March '12, and will be touring this fall with a stop at our very own Neumos at the end of October. More info here.

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