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Record review | Crushes

Tig Notaro — Good One

Can you believe Tig Notaro has been doing stand up for 14 years? I can believe it. I can totally wrap my head around that (as she says about getting news about a friend's five year old child starting kidnargten and being asked, "Can you believe that?" because yes, she can). Even though her super-casual, silky smooth but somehow adorably a little bit anxious, coffee pal style of comedy smacks you as fresh as a shower to an infant, only a vet can pull that off.

Yet now Secretly Canadian has extended their picky taste in exceptional independent rock to alt-comedy, and Tig has her CD debut out this week, full of warm, generous, empathetic, and sometimes a little creepy (in a cute way) material with titles like "Little Titties," "No Moleste," and "Taylor Dayne." All three of these bits were high points of her dominating the comedy stages at Bumbershoot last year, and they fall into that arguably rare category of recorded stand up you want to hear again and again.

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Tuesday, August 2, 2011
by Chris Estey
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Record review | Capitol Hill Block Party

Kurt Vile — Smoke Ring For My Halo

{Kurt Vile is going to be playing the Capitol Hill Block Party on Friday, July 22, starting at 5pm on the Main Stage.}

Kurt Vile has an occasionally insouciant vocal presence, yet a luscious guitar tone. "Baby's Arms," the new single, is as much a raspberry blown at the world as a lustful kiss splattered on the cheek of his sweetheart. "I get sick of just about everyone / so I hide in my baby's arms." That's how this timelessly rebellious dichotomy is presented on his new, fourth full length Smoke Ring For My Halo.

Vile only kind of means being mean. He likes to sing about "a whole lot of dirt" (a mocking, baiting masterwork called "Runner Ups"), yet was raised in a genteel bluegrass, Jesus-loving household. According to rumor, he tried to bring the banjo of his youth back on this album, but maybe those got left in the outtakes (next time?).

 

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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
by Chris Estey
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Record review | New Releases

White Orange — White Orange

It's no surprise that Portland, OR band's White Orange is fronted/fully finessed by a hands-on studio owner and full-time acid-axe victim. Adam Pike sits in the corner of Pac NW's rock dungeon basement, egg-shell sheets all over the incense-drenched walls, orange crates of the most lysergic-infused hallucination-crunch hard psyche LPs near his feet, as he plays with some gimmicks box and weird tuning and drops long cigarette ashes into the denim cuff of his greasy jeans.

His self-titled nine track White Orange album easily shows why his Toadhouse Recording House skills are in such frenetic demand: Any raunch riff-based band (for example, Red Fang, Norska, Rabbits) would crave to sound this futurist and primitive-brutal all at once. Pike is a Sinatra of the dummy-headed bad-trip existential vocal, spinning turgid journeys through The Sword and Nebula style virtual reality doom stomp. Contemporary artists of this style often have the licks, but don't have the bottom end; White Orange cranks and throbs deep inside the crust of the lurch-groove ("Middle Of The Riddle"), then sprightly trills into pure cosmic pop pleasuring ("Dinosaur Bones").

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011
by Chris Estey
2 comments

Latest comment by: Chris Estey: "

Just have a promo, no credits. 

"

Record review | Best of

Tennis Pro — Shimokita Is Dead

Usually when a band gets down to business time it isn't always fun: it can be a release of pent up disappointments and missed chances. But Tennis Pro do a complete 180 degree breakdance spin and, instead, throw a party of a record. And their world domination just means fun for everyone at that party. The opening lines of tight gut-funk opener "Dance Hit Number 1" (this isn't a track on a UK greatest wavo-disco 12" from the 80s compilation??), upon which is preached, "Are you downtrodden my brother? Afflicted, my son? Well, pick yourself up, you're not done."

From there, drummer Sean Lowry, vocalist and guitarist David Drury, and multi-talented bassist Philip Peterson (oh yeah, vocals, strings, backrubs, brass, breaking glass, keyboards, champion snogger, knows a guy, who knows a guy, works a room, keeps swinging, et al) just fully determined to break out of the miasmatic indie rock ghetto of focused failure and small club woes. The big fat bold blue sound of Shimokita Is Dead? puts all the clocks to bed and demands the guests have at least one more, to paraphrase the sweet warning of " Saratomi Bicycle" -- those beloved fellow partiers being Dita Vox (Thee Emergency!), Cristina Bautista, guitarist Matt Black, Jessica Abbey, and Blake Jeffcoat. Their crisp, welcomed talents add to the jumped-up franticness what all those weed dealers dealers did for The Clash on Sandinista! Except in one third the size and only dubbed out at the end of a couple surfy, bonfire-glowing burn-down tracks (and you got to have those by 3 am).

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Tuesday, July 5, 2011
by Chris Estey
2 comments

Latest comment by: Chris Estey: "

Thanks for encouraging me to really get into it, Amie! I literally couldn't stop spinning it for days on end. So many aural pleasures pour out with repeated playing. Much appreciation!

"

Record review | New Releases | Northwest Bands

Curtains For You — After Nights Without Sleep

{Curtains For You play on Thursday, June 30, at the Columbia City Theater. Presented by Team Up for Nonprofits and KEXP, benefitting Art Corps! Doors open at 8:30pm, and Kelli Schaefer opens. $20 advance tickets, $25 at the door.}

They've played sold out gigs with The Head and the Heart and The Posies, where this five-piece "retro-pop" band snagged frequent raves from bloggers among the fan-thronged crowds; made the Top 10 band list in City Arts Magazine; and got KEXP play for their dizzying debut What A Lovely Surprise To Wake Up Here. But now Curtains For You are raising the stakes artistically, releasing an album as punchy and psychically provocative as Dear 23.

Somehow trimming off their more nostalgic musical tendencies for a timeless power pop sound, and adding a new invigorating and unusually sensitive approach to lyric writing, After Nights Without Sleep sounds like its title: That bizarre buzz of being up too long, and thinking too much, and not being able to settle down yet. It is bracing morning rock filled with overflowing emotions ("thick as bacon grease left out in the plan," from "Eggs Over Toast"), somehow as sobering and intoxicating as a triple espresso-infused Irish coffee drink.

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Thursday, June 30, 2011
by Chris Estey
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Latest comment by: Chris Estey: "

Right. What's amazing about this group is that they're not hung up in some pre-adolescent state, trying to use their mind-blowing musical tricks to shock audiences over and over. Instead, they've grown from the initially inspired busyness, ...