{Dave Alvin, Christy McWilson, Kasey Anderson, and Andrew McKeag are playing a benefit for Susie Tennant on Tuesday, October 11, at the Tractor Tavern.}

Susie Tennant is an incredible lady, having helped the Seattle music community in a gazillion different ways: from promoting Sub Pop artists with the verve and creativity of the artists and the owners of the label, and more recently running amazing literary and related events at one of Seattle's best night-life venues, Town Hall. She had recently been struggling with cancer therapy, and while things are looking great there's still a ton of medical bills. So giving back to Susie continues after the big Nirvana Live bash at the EMP (where dozens of local musicians helped out covering songs from the DGC album she publicized), with the next leg being tonight's must-see benefit show at the Tractor.

This will be a benefit I personally won't miss, as it is headlined by one of my favorite musicians of all time, Dave Alvin. You have to understand, and I can only quote Danny Bland {one-time Sub Pop co-worker of Susie's and guitar player for Catt Butt, Best Kissers in the World, and Dwarves guitarist} on this -- that Dave Alvin was in (and the primary songwriter for) the greatest band in the world: The Blasters. This was a rockabilly group signed to Slash back in the day of X in the early 80s, and their self-titled album and protest-driven Non-Fiction on that label are in my all time top twenty LPs. I was living in Hollywood in those days and the well-played sweaty revelry they inspired has never been quite matched at any other shows I've attended. Traditional musicians set loose in the cultural labyrinth of punk, they gave the scene rocking authenticity and more musical strength in their downtrodden upbeat anthems than any new wave dance band could muster.

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More than a great percentage of people I’ve met, I’m someone who likes things I can count on. This might explain everything from why I’ve worked only two jobs over the past decade to why I always pack my cigarettes exactly eight times. OK, “I’m nuts” might be a better explanation for the latter but I digress.

With all this in mind, Fountains of Wayne are, in many ways, the perfect band for someone like me. They figured out early on what they were good at and stuck to the script. When a new FoW record drops, you’re guaranteed to be treated to flawlessly constructed pop songs with tight yet exceedingly simple arrangements. They’re the most reliable three and a half minutes in rock n roll. Suffice to say, Sky Full of Holes continues in this vein.

That said, FoW’s fifth full length is hardly a carbon copy of their previous catalog. Most notably, they’ve dialed back the punchy electric guitar approach that has been something of a staple. Sky Full of Holes relies much more on mid-tempo, largely acoustic backdrops. About half way through, I found myself thinking a lot about The Get Up Kids.

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I'm going to start this new "album round up" for Three Imaginary Girls with the above recent You Tube video for Sean Rowe's "Jonathan": (1.) Because I think it's the best song off of his recent Magic album (recently given full treatment here) and though it's been out a while the video is new. More-so, it's starting my summer off all rum and cola-sweetly, buzzy and bubbly at dusk-time, and I want to share it with you because the tune still grabs my attention. (2.) That's to help set the tone for a regular column that will primarily focus on the best songs on the albums I'm playing, while taking care of full length business as economically as possible. This doesn't mean I won't be doing more full length album reviews; but they might get the test-run here before they get the full heat treatment. Or, as in Rowe's case, I might remind you dear reader of previously scribed-about music that I think needs further attention, probably due to a bright jelly ear-worm melting in the candy jar of my brain.

Now to a hit and run consumer guide starting in my iTunes, and running into my headphones and down through my fingers briskly with the assistance of a jar of cold, strong coffee and soy milk:

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Our favorite Australian balladeer is coming to Seattle for an early Saturday show on Saturday 16th! Touring in support of 2010's brilliant I Will Love You At All (which was one of my top 10 records of 2010) and the recent Butterfly Bones EP (which features two songs from the album), Darren Hanlon will take to the High Dive stage at a very reasonable 5.30pm time slot to charm us with his unmatchable disarming banter and cozy melodic tales of schoolboy crushes, punk roommates, true love, and squash.

More than just a fella with good taste in friends (he's opened up for the Magnetic Fields and Billy Bragg, just to name drop a little), most folks leave his shows feeling like you have a new BFF... and one that can play the ukulele at that. Let's start off our Saturday night in High Dive style!

And if your friends still aren't convinced that they should join you at the DH show...

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THIS LP POPPED MY NEW WAVE CHERRY. It was 1979, my parents had taken me to Peaches on 45th (R.I.P.), a great big old record store, and my mom made me choose between this, Nick Lowe's second solo album (after playing with pub rockers Brinsley Schwarz, which I still don't think I've heard to this day, and while he produced Elvis Costello's first few amazing records), and The Clash's Give 'Em Enough Rope. A hard choice, but Labour Of Lust became my 13th birthday present.

Up until that purchase, it had mostly been all Queen and Heart and such for me. One day in 1978, I heard "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight" on the radio when some rednecks from Walla Walla were making fun of it for an April Fool's Joke as they did their radio shift. I expected to hear Dr. Demento that Sunday evening, but discovered The Rezillos instead. And I started to think of myself as "punk," but that meant listening to the end of "Bohemian Rhapsody" over and over, you know, the part where it gets really aggressive.

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{Menomena photo by Ben Moon. The Darren Hanlon photo is by someone equally as talented, but unknown to me}

It's time to get out your basket of needles and thread and join us for some quality crafty times! This month we'll be gather at Neptune Coffee (in Greenwood) on Sunday, August 8 from 1pm-3pm and hear brand new albums by Menomena (7/27 release on Barsuk) and Darren Hanlon (9/21 release on Yep Roc).  We'll have a raffle with Menomena and Darren Hanlon -themed prizes, a Neptune beverage special, and a stitching tutorial!

Stitch n B!tch class:
Bring your own craft or join in our first imaginary craft tutorial led by Shrie of Lo and Behold (see flickr / website for crafty portfolio). Shrie is going to show those of us interested how to embroider. If you want to join in, we'll have imaginary-themed stitching kits available so you don't even have to guess what supplies you'll need to get started (but make sure to bring your own scissors - those things are expensive!). Shrie will bring everything we need to learn to stitch and leave the Imaginary Crafty Listening Party with a finished and beautifully stitched craft.

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Uneven albums by your favorite artists are like spending a uneventful, sort of boring evening with your very best friend. You could criticize the night, but you're still really glad she was there anyways, and it's not like you would take those hours back.

In the wake of roots-soulful indie rock band Grant Lee Buffalo, singer/songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips recorded his most recent solo album Little Moon in just four days with a small tribe of veterans, including Jay Bellerose (the drummer from the Allison Krauss/Robert Plant Raising Sand album). Jamie Edwards puts a cozy wash of keyboards and sweet fills between Phillips' coy and wizened vocals and Bellerose's drums, with Sebastian Aymans adding more clickety-clank style percussion as well. Bass player Paul Bryan is hardly there in a good way.

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It would be enough for an artist to release a great album from his own group while helping out a huge, still vital band like REM create new, meaningful music since the mid-90s. But Seattle-in-Portland-exile (well, that's how I see it) indie rock originator Scott McCaughey simultaneously released a mighty fine Minus 5 full length just as his reunited OG band the Young Fresh Fellows put one out too. And it turns out that if I Think This Is was released by itself in any year, it would have been considered a come-back coup for the caustic troubadour. On top of that, McCaughey, Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate), Linda Pitman, and REM's Peter Buck (!) have just released The Baseball Project, a spritely whole album dedicated to their baseball fandom. That's sort of like McCaughey's version of Sandinista! separated into three different releases with three different bands and no Mikey Dread or kid's choruses. Wow. (Key tracks on The Baseball Project: "Ted Fucking Williams," "Sometimes I Dream Of Willie Mays," and "The Death of Big Ed Delahanty.")

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The Minus 5 are releasing Killingsworth at the same time leader Scott McCaughey is putting out Young Fresh Fellows' I Think This Is, both on Yep Roc. McCaughey's OG band was the YFF, one of the most high profile "college rock" bands of the 80s, their sinuous chicane garnering acclaim from Rolling Stone to scores of local zines at the time. That band included, among others, Kurt Bloch (later Fastbacks), whose guitar is the inspiration for a lot of playing that has come out of this region since then.

But there have been few songwriters Seattle-spawned as misery-guzzling and diarizing as McCaughey, whose drunk village savant rants and rave-ups against relationships, religion, the rent, and himself are close to the hearts of his purlieus peers. Upon moving to Portland, he began amassing collaborators there who have helped his newer band put out some out much of his best music ever, such as The Gun Album from a couple of years back, pulling in Wilco's Jeff Tweedy as well. This album has on board for much of it John Moen of the Decemberists (and "a Maroon and a Dharma Bum and a Jick"), and the vocals of Colin Meloy, but also REM's Peter Buck as usual. Special note should be made of Little Sue and the Shee Bee Gees who do a lot of backing vocals and dueting ("I Would Rather Sacrifice You" in particular for that) here in the way that female accompaniment has made later period Leonard Cohen albums less caustic on the ears.

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The gasoline-soaked, whiskey-filled Rat-King of Tumbleweed Town.

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