This is not an April Fool's prank, friends: if you weren't able to make it out to Neumos on Saturday night for Mudhoney's record release show, you've still got a shot at seeing them live! They'll be taking the stage at Easy Street Records in West Seattle tonight at 8pm, celebrating the release of Vanishing Point as well as the 25th anniversary of Sub Pop (and Easy Street). All of our favorite things!!

Entry for the in-store starts at 6, and if you're a cafe frequenter, take note that they close today at 3.

We'll see you in West Seattle!

The Transmissionary Six, Songs 2002-2012 (Skok) 

One of my favorite bands ever, The Transmissionary Six, has roots in The Walkabouts (which both TM6 founders Terry Moeller and Paul Austin have played in by now), and recording and live connections to all the best kept secrets in Seattle: Graig Markel, Head Like A Kite, and others. But they easily stand alone as one of the most gorgeous songcrafting teams from the Pacific NW. Seattle-raised Terri was a drummer from The Walkabouts back in the day, Paul played with Willard Grant Conspiracy on the East Coast, collectively having played to thousands in Europe and to a loyal following here. They started something with Transmissionary Six neither had quite tried before, but they excelled at immediately: bringing to life heart-trembling Noir Rock, as steeped in mystery as it was in hooks. Like the movie House Of Games, or Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, or an album like Marianne Faithful's Broken English, it was all about blissful times and twisted times, and their stories and melodies were immortal. This is an excellent collection of their work, featuring essentials like "Black Tin Rocket" (the superbly cinematic opener to early album Get Down), "Top Of Your Lungs" (a lady-like take on a "Positively 4th Street" character study / piss off), and the very groovy "Edison Stare." I wish "I Want To Deprogram You" was here, but that just means if you love this go out and buy Cosmonautical, the album it's on and still available. Hell, buy 'em all!

The Great UM, What The People Want

We're absolutely freaking lucky we live in a city that constantly brings people in who in some other world have cannily created and crafted some new trick out of the mined-gold and heart-jank of the pop song. Artists move to Seattle to be part of an almost parochial (closely regionalized) music scene with connections elsewhere, intimate enough to build a following, but still breathing second-hand smoke from a cosmo-world. Okay, I'm fronting. I have no idea who these guys are and I think they're from somewhere else, otherwise why hadn't I been involved before? How'd they slip by me into here? Were they always here, what is happening - ?! Oops, sorry. I want to know more! The Great UM make me bounce like it's Friday near midnight at my favorite sloppy pub and forgive the girl next to me for spiashing her drink on my best shoes, whilst I totally wonder what they're going to sing next the way mysterious rock real men have since Gene Vincent. They remind me a bit of The Jam, a little of Ted Leo, the recent UK folk-rock kids, and then there's all those 60s freak-beat followers. They're here to bring the clap-along to the secular, bringing out the singalong from those who don't meet much mercy. Their scrappy but solid songs make fun of their bosses "selling those good times," chatting unemployment and borrowed car blues in exactly the opposite tones (chin up mate!).  This is Caleb Thompson (singer/guitarist), Robb Benson (drummer), and Jake Uitti (bassist), and there isn't much out there about them now but they're going to change that by playing gigs and asking some very decent questions. Do you yearn for the day when groups like Dolour would jump out of the shadows from behind the bar down the street from the all ages club, building a bridge out of music niches and the nestles of the mundane? This is that kind of band. Choice track: "Stay," a song John Lennon should have and could have written. Then right away, "Daydream" reminds me of McCartney fronting Big Star. Whoa.

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We had to have some good tunes to get us through a year of watching a psychopathic plutocrat trying to pitch us back into the black and white world of fifties-era paranoia and imperialism. That victory against vileness confirmed, going back over the songs that made us swoon for the past few months is very pleasurable, as great music can transcend the tough times it was made to get through.

Below are the most repeated recent songs in my playlist, save for the tracks from bands I did publicity for. (I will say that I only do PR for bands I truly love, which is why the Big Freak roster is so small. I'm a picky and fussy little bear. But this is not the place to hype my own wares.) Also, I will note that I will not have a list of albums this year; I think there are still great full-lengths out there, but not enough for me to make a list of. You can blame that on the limited amount of albums I have access to; but I do buy and acquire enough that that's not quite the case.

It could very well be that there's too many great records coming out to keep track of 'em, and to get anything done in terms of keeping up the format of ten or twelve tracks released by one artist or group is increasingly becoming an arbitrary time-lump of expression. Yeah, it's the obvious technological changes (songs trumping long-players, even with the re-rise of vinyl), but also the fact that much more product and much less discriminating gatekeepers are flash-flooding over the trickle of sweet stuff. It's out there, but we're going to need new ways to hook in. This is making places like KEXP or NPR or WFMU, your extinction-threatened informed record store clerk, what you hear at your favorite DJ night, the journalist with an actual story, the in-touch blogger with deep tastes, even labels who don't sign every band (and publicists who don't take on every client, ahem), and of course beloved community-amping affairs like Three Imaginary Girls, that much more necessary.

Believe it or leave it.

Now to the tuneage, in order of honest amounts of plays (assuming my devices aren't fibbing):

1.) Dum Dum Girls, "Trees And Flowers"

It may be ludicrous to most big boy and bought off rock crits to say, but Dum Dum Girls is arguably the best rock band going today. Tapping into the sixties, seventies and eighties without being a straight hippie-power pop-new wave Freakbeat homage, and crystallizing a powerful dual voice in vibrant vocals and velvety music, they hypnotize as they freeze-dry your tears. Every song on this End of Daze EP is a too-sweet tease for a Dee Dee 2013. 

2.) THEE Satisfaction, "Queens"

"Whatever you do, don't funk with my groove." The apex-high point on possibly the best Seattle album of the year, awE NaturalE, it is a perfect song about sleek and confident boundary setting. Catherine Harris-White and Stasia Irons are truly among the best in modern art-soul, following up the heat from their dangerous live shows with a contagious meditation on Being and Blissfulness with a little help from mentor Ish (Shabazz Palaces). There are other great songs on the Sub Pop debut full-length, but this is first pick for my own mix-tape. 

3.) Constant Lovers, "Open Toe Heels"

Constant Lovers is a slow drag of a drug-dipped cigarette after feral sex. A stagger home after too many drinks with someone who lights all your fireworks. It's toxic-bad for you, but no mere basement-boy sludge-punk or anything like an AmRep rip off (cough cough). Don't trust the locals who pass on these guys, they're tourists in our town. This is the real Seattle sleaze and squeeze. This pole-dancing clear-heeled 3:31 freak-out is just going to shiv your liver and rot your gut but you won't smell a thing as she plows under. This is a particularly ballsy blast of hot spicy cocktail sauce at the center of their True Romance full-length (get it!!), a hard rock hassle truly good for these times. With Ben Verellen (Helms Alee) now on drums (!!!), maybe the feudal lords with labels will start buying in what's primo and already available in their own hoods and stop exporting cash and stash to GQ-core wanna-bes elsewhere.

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Autumn is a favorite, TIG-cherished time of year, but that isn't necessarily good for new music for me: I am a sentimental bastard and tend to pull out worn-down LPs by my long-time sources of melancholic joy, rather than creeping the current release racks for song-buzz. Besides that, this year Sean Rowe's summer-released The Salesman and the Shark wouldn't stop pounding on my door and nibbling on my toes whenever I hit the 'wake up!' button on my iPod. (Don't want to short-cut it too much, but if you love the croaky love-monk rummy-rheumy ruminations of L. Cohen, V. Morrison, and T. Waits, get into his second Anti- album ASAP.) There was at least one full-length that should have been in that hot-months sweep though, which I end this seasonal assessment off with, in case anyone missed it. 

The Pharmacy (Old Flame Records), Stoned & Alone - 7.8

Scottie Yodher is his own Vashon Island-raised maestro-dude, but in just a few short years he's cheerily channeled all those isolated and passionate feelings of being a musician in the Pacific NW into superb pop rock bursts of glistening garage roque. Brendhan Bowers comes along to help flesh out these awkward little creatures of longing, like the Badfingering "Baby Be," the misery strum-lunge of "Josephine," and the keys-twirling "Dig Your Grave." Somehow I couldn't totally warm up too much to the seven inch they released under that title earlier this year, but this is fully blossomed and rosy-cheeked, no matter how times Yodher was kept awake all night pouring it all out. Stoned & Alone sounds ready to surround the surreal humor of scenes in a Monkees-style Saturday morning TV show for moptops who ride second hand Vespas (or have lovers who do). 

The Coup (Anti-), Sorry To Bother You - 8.5

Possibly my favorite new album of the year, in a scrap with the Rowe, which is fascinating because both are on Anti- (kicking ass there, kids). Why do I love The Coup so much? Boots has a flow that is neither concerned with pleasing the suburban punters or the inner city poseurs; it's both snake oil revolutionary and working class caustic, somehow trustable by not sounding like anything you've hard on the radio in the past twenty years. (That is a good thing, trust me.) Like a lot of punk rock, Riley has lived and learned the system against the hot-heads in power or powerless, but has devoured enough empowerment not to be melodramatic about his own bruises or boring about what damage he can cause. He knows theory but sounds like he's read more at PM Press than a mere anarchist pamphlet, or chased an MFA doing weird things with her elbows and hands as she choppily unpacks abuse she's read about. Unlike a lot of new wave, it's weird and quirky and funky and a post-punk geezer like me knows most of the samples (Art of Noise! Alice Cooper! I could do this all night). This is about something, but isn't oblique in sharing it, unlike other adult rap that doesn't want its older brother scowling for mysterious freak outs like "We've Got A Lot To Teach You, Cassius Green" (what the fuck is that all about?). It's all technically called hip-hop, but it actually moves a story along more than that it IS hip-hop (who cares?), give me your money, blah blah. The Coup is party music for heads, both smart ones and freaks; a full album of the kind of synth-driven power pop Prince made ("I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man") that doesn't leave out the possibility of a guillotine for social change. The Coup is the MC5 of hip-hop, which scares the Man now as it did then.

Dum Dum Girls, End of Daze EP (Sub Pop) - 8.7

I already thought the world of Dee Dee and her chilly, sonorous blasts of well-read black licorice-flavored punk-into-power pop bomp, Menthol-smoke blown Girl Group romantic desolation, and late night Dusty In Memphis appreciation soul-ache. But working with Sun Rose Wagner of The Raveonettes as well as longtime mentor Richard Gottehrer ("whose track record includes the Brill Building, CBGB, and Sire Records," and if those ring pop culture bells, we share the same church). These five pretty slices up the arm of the listener send shivers down the spine, casting failed love affairs into a Dante's Inferno of crushed empathy and bone-broken medicated bliss. "And I hate the trees, and I hate the flowers, and I hate the buildings and the way they tower over me," she sings, soaking in the sadness of the city and turning it into a celestial cathedral about as beautiful as Chrissie Hynde ever harmonized (no shit). The upcoming full-length is going to be ferocious/gorgeous, I have every expectation from this sumptuous five song communion.

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As we mentioned this summer, recent Sub Pop signees Husky have taken on the world with their "meticulous, soothing, gentle-assault, looking out the train window movie-soundtrack sound", and so far as we can tell, the masses agree. Since that post, we saw Husky come through town on a bill with Shearwater, and the next time we turned around, they're premiering the very video above on Rolling Stone's website. Bravah, Heathers -- the beautiful, attention-grabbing, slow-chugging train of "Tidal Wave" deserves all the attention it can get.

Husky just played a few dates in the Northwest last weekend -- but if you happen to be out in the rest of the country {Chicago, Boston, New York and the like}, you've still got a chance to catch them live over the next few weeks. Pop on over to their Sub Pop page to take a peek at their upcoming tour dates, and head on out to the shows if you can.

It's late summer and I have been listening to many refreshing albums, as the world heats up more than ever. And now, it's time for the Fall releases to come in, a smattering of which are below among a multi-artist round-up of what has been soundtracking my daily toil, night terrors, and lovely bits of trauma:

Nouela, Chants (The Control Group) - 8.0

Nouela was born to Norwegian and Korean parents, and learned to play everything (guitar, flute, clarinet, saxophone, bass) and has played in Mon Frere (her main first band), most recently released People Eating People (a musical roar of spiritual journaling), and has toured with Fall of Troy, Schoolyard Heroes, Say Hi, and Cursive. She is super-musical. She is mostly vox/keys now, bumping on the 88s as she Billie-Holidays all over the ex-lovers and habits she kicks to quit. PEP was a bit more diverse and jaunty; this is her complete cohesion and emotional maturation, occasionally just as ranty ("Fight") but often more explorative and sober. This is her most adult release, but it's still clever and thrilling and shows how Seattle artists can hanker down in their Ballard home-srudios and create private blisses that can be as bold in the heart as any "Jungleland." Is Nouela our Springsteen? She's born to run, but she ain't no rich Jersey bum. Let this tidal wave of creamy voice, sweet emotion, and exacto-slicing ideas slit and swarm around you till you pool toward shore.

Niki & The Dove, Instinct (Sub Pop) - 8.0

"What it takes to burn / what it means to breathe fire." Some mean that. "I'm ready to learn." Stevie Nicks is nightclubbing? Is she warm leatheretting now? (See/hear track #3, "In Our Eyes.") But, yeah. No. This is the least ironic alt-dance album you might hear all year. It bounces with weed seeds and mixed glitter thrown everywhere in its condo-clean art school dormroom, and when it coyly embraces you, it isn't sideways-safe and you're not the close-enemy, you're a prized pal. An expired-prescription generous collection of singles (including the first, "DJ, Ease My Mind," and the best, "Somebody") from this Swedish duo, which reads like a project designed to play all of Purple Rain live, but sounds like Kate Bush if she remembered to stay interesting. Instinct will not arouse arch politically correct polemics about race and kitsch. It's just a lot of fucking ABBA-infused fun.

Sean Rowe, The Salesman and the Shark (ANTI-) - 8.7

Last year Sean Rowe was lifted onto the same label as Neko Case, Tom Waits, and Nick Cave, with Magic, which had such sonorous, highly-detailed dark night of the soul suicide machine sonnets as "Jonathan" and the end of the world in a bourbon break up "Time To Think." Still, there was plenty of filler Rowe had sketched out to keep the barflys happy at all the open mics he practiced at through the Rots (Aughts for those of us on relief). But I loved it and was eager to hear the follow up, which has turned out to be twice as loaded with baritone-breathed, soul-swaddling song-soldiering than before. "I would not lose to junkies on the street," he sings on "Flying," a song that Cohen has been trying to write for ten years, "I built a highway out of dust and I was flying." Opening "Bring Back The Night" has all the heart-stoned Sunday afternoon urban resignation of Waits' own "Tom Traubert's Blues," but with less gritty distraction. "The Lonely Maze" has the best vocal melody ever stolen from a dearly barely remembered Classical tune I have no idea that it is, then doo-wops over to the blades of grass squinting up out of dirt and sand on the dusky boardwalk. "Downwind" is the absolute hit here, and if this was MY boy I would have insisted its laying low from the law, joining the carnival to stay out of the stink Beatnik bomp was sequenced first on this "platter" (does ANTI- make vinyl?!). Next up would be the chugging, churning Noir folk-funk of "Joe's Cult," which might be playing on KEXP right now. And: strings, pretty girls singing, trains, trains, trains. This is probably my favorite album of the year. A truly beautiful voice, wizened through experience and practice, lyrics well worth returning to again and again, and enough soul to smother an orphan. Hot cha.

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How does a Seattle boy deal with a debilitating dose of depression and then some newfound creative sparks in Los Angeles? (J./Joshua) Tillman {formerly of the Fleet Foxes} shows a gripping, glistening way how on his debut as Father John Misty, Fear Fun. It involves a lot of reading Beats and bards and bohemian travel writers; writing reams of visions and observations and humiliating admissions; listening to a whole lot of great albums from the later Vietnam era created by PTSD-shaken troubadours; perfervidly working on demos with producer/singwriter comrade Jonathan Wilson, and bringing on board Phil Ek to help mix it. Also: treehouse living with spiders, Canadian Shamans who share a little too much intoxicant, Adderall and weed otherwise, a lot of funerals, fumbling drinks, and novels needing to be written as one lives life like a "You take your chances here, pal" roller coaster.

It's tempting to hang it all on the inspiration of Laurel Canyon, the scene where Wolf Kings of the Hills wither in manses face down in champagne-drenched mink. Tillman ended up there, and it has not only resurrected the creativity of a drummer-loner in a highly successful but probably very hard-to-be-heard-in band, but also given the world a full-length that will make many best-ofs this year (just wait and watch). Besides that, for those who find other bands under the CSNY-dew sparkling umbrella gimmicky and merely lovely at best, Tillman's truly glorious vocals, completely unpredictable lyrics, and joyfully creative multi-layered music is probably going to convert many on the sidelines of this genre.

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Spoek Mathambo's Father Creeper may be the sleeper of the year. It is disguised as world stew glitch brew, but its album cover somehow perfectly captures both the sturdiness and destruction: A glistening facade of a corporate building reflecting a fire and sinister Nomadic tribe leaving an accident or attack. In the face of the future, the mystery of the past destroys.

South African rapper-singer-gizmo grifter Mathambo has been criticized for relentlessness and lyrical jackassery in his mix of rock, hip-hop, and all those things rock and hip-hop fans can't easily identify. Sure, there's crunk bass and Krautrock squiggles surrounding lyrically rude and mocking low life rebellion ("We Can Work"), which actually reminds me quite a bit of a Black Rock version of best aspects of the first Shabazz Palaces EP (the self-titled one, not Of Light). It's all about shirking work and digging whatever cake is called down in SA.

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THEESatisfaction create Blue Note-kissed hip-hop bliss from "your limbs to your Tims." Tacoma-grown Stasia Irons and Seattle-Hawai'i reared Catherine Harris-White, the two who scribe and dance and capture their electronic sound-scapes as THEESatisfaction, have been hearing their talents cheered on for a couple of years now in Seattle. It was the next flow, and every show they performed here (or say in NYC with collaborator/guest stars here, Shabazz Palaces) their positive vibes, open queerness, black pride, and devotion to the musical-esoteric inspired praise and eyes and ears wide open.

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