Three Imaginary Girls - Sub Pop

Only In Dreams

Chris Estey — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 18:40:20 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Only-Dreams-Dum-Girls/dp/B005EL6ILK/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

"I do not pray but tonight I am begging," she sings on "Heartbeat," five tracks into Only In Dreams, the Dum Dum Girls' second album. Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls writes songs out of longing. For a boy, the feeling of when she first got high, the kiss that felt like a punch. All pop music is probably about longing, and I hate to bring authenticity into anything, but "Bedroom Eyes" (on the DDG's intimidatingly glistening, nervously adult sophomore set) sounds like she really wants (him/the love object/you) there.

She wrote the song when she was lonely, according to the bio, after returning jet-legged from a European tour, and lonely. Really fucking lonely. She says she was alone at home, and insomnia was grinding in her bones, and she read a poem by Rosetti, and she had to bum some zonk-pills off her pop and she scribed this aching, ennui-stricken anthem -- thus we have the audio-poetic equivalent of "Ambien zombie sex."

This anecdote -- filled with isolation, the need for intoxication, the desire to read literature to medicate as well in the black hole of the tour come down -- explains why Dum Dum Girls sounds to me as sparks-to-the-fingers-near-the-wet-socket as the first Pretenders LP, or the third or fourth Ramones album, Blondie's break-through Parallel Lines. You got to live, you got to think of sex when you have death ("Caught In One" -- "this year's been a drag, who knew it'd be so bad?"). Tinny guitar roar and handclaps and bass submerged in the big room where it all swims around the streetwise siren's call.

And as Hannah Levin mentioned (rock crit goddess genius credit where it's due) to me, in that also is an essential absorbing of the Mazzy Star hiss of lawns crushed by late night drama and seduction. This is underbelly-suburban music made for junkie thieves in the city, who need the fresh blood to bring the legal amphetamine to the party ("Coming Down"). It will be on endless repeat next to the 1972 Mixmaster Jazz Fender bass a dealer is holding till a regular "client" gets back, on the dust-encrusted boombox above the abandoned publicity stills for Muholland Drive's bit actors.

Yeah, it probably takes the shaman of sha-la-la, Blondie boss Richard Gottehrer (producer, pills, powder) to make it all seem real on reel to reel, but mentors are a given and rarely properly identified by journos. ("You abuse the ones who love you/ you abuse the ones who won't.")

Only In Dreams doesn't sound much like Roy Orbison in spite of its title; it does however sound like the kind of depraved-passionate Franco-chamber romp album a doomed girl freeze-dried in biker leathers might sing from the back of his cycle as he wipes out in the dirt and glitter outside Los Angeles. I could listen to these sweetly murmuring final little death whimpers and moans forever.

{On Sunday, October 9th, Dum Dum Girls are playing at 6 p.m. with Wavves at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Industrial Center, 2960 4th Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134. And then later on at Neumo's the same night with The Crocodiles and Colleen Green, doors at 8 p.m., $13 advance, 21+.}

Black Up

Chris Estey — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:41:21 +0000

8.5

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Up-Shabazz-Palaces/dp/B004UA8DUU/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

shabazz.jpg

Once you do something extraordinary, the universe gets in the way. People almost seem to be willing you to fail by praising your breakthrough effort, the burst of vision that placed you inside (the center of the world). Near the end of Black Up -- Shabazz Palaces' first full length but second major statement -- evolution is described as passe. Cyberspace controlled by profit-cops and the grid lurked on by the greedy are corny topics, but fools still eat anti-matter and trifle. So we proceed with icy and persistent recognition.

But Palaceer Lazaro (revealed to be Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler of 90s jazz-rap Digable Planets, now in the backyard of cyber-barons and baristas) sprawled cosmic surveillance and urban physical backwaters all through Shabazz Palaces' primary EP announcements, too. Those two discs featured "Kill White T" and "4 Shadows" and "Sparkles" and if electronically throat-modulated / mbari percussionist Tendai Maraire (the Billy Cobham of beats) didn't slyly perplex your attention with his very precise rhythmic pointillism, then Butler would wipe you out with very detail-oriented short stories about Barbara, cocaine, and partying in a Death Star (because it's no longer a rocket for science fiction rock and roll, it's all earth hip-hop and the ship has flown).

Digable Planets' two LPs, Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) and Blowout Comb, and the flipped out big heat of Cherrywine (Butler's last joint) were so much older then (the 90s), they're younger than that now (let's go back to Bambaataa and start the whole goddamn thing over again). It's year zero, and all of that sounds like, well, crossing over jazz and rap. Black Up, the first full-length in form, sounds maybe like where jazz was going in the days of Rahsaan Roland Kirk but sliced and dropped out with the digital developed in the next decade.

Me? It's just great pop music made by smart, nice, real men who actually own real stereos but make songs for those of us with iPods. I don't know my God-hop from my Sequential Circuits, I came to learn. Butler emphatically uses synesthesia in the lean electro-funk tradition, with juicy lips, deception being the truest act, philosophy is cruelty, catchy yes trendy no, up or don't toss it at all (not in that order) matched with I lost the best beat that I had in a rhyming scheme teenagers in high school speak words to first year of English. Yeah, "free press and curl" starts with the most basic of rap flows, just like a punk band might throw a mundane tantrum from the top to then melt you down with the rest. It's a three part suite around that, as amorphous and mystifying as anything they put out last year on the first two mini-albums.

THEESatisfaction's sweet voices are mince-mixed into children's ghost cries around jail cell echo backing doo-wop and keys-vibes for "the echo from the hosts ..." and things are definitely getting supernatural. I don't know where this space is, but when Butler accosts, "Who do you think you are?" I feel more in tarnation than Job before the Lord. A slain spirit of 70s soul grifts around the next jam, "Are you ... Can you ..." while it describes a near death experience or a new romance.

"A treatese ..." is the new "I Need Love," a confident but sweetly polite come-on in this realm -- a beautiful fantasy swirling between the ice and the cran and the vodka -- but he does definitely want to be in there. It's silly and fun and should shock all the critics in NYC who want to see this as some sort of Twin Peaks Pac NW death disco dub. The Barry Adamson-style noir OST of "Endeavors" brings back the femme vox, and the TS gals sound great enticing some detective to lose his shit on some sort of bullshit case. Well, I'm seduced at least (and saxed up, "forever and never").

"It's appealing" and "it's a feeling" ... "forever and ever" and "forever and never." Something's happening here with the use of how words are said, and you could call that spoken word I guess, but no one is gesticulating like they're cutting bologna at the deli after school. It's an old rap trick but far closer to Last Poets than (pick your gangsta). And this can't be said enough, this is hip-hip rooted back to "right on" (said not in irony) rap, and the suggestion that perhaps this is just the new black rock, in the way that James Blood Ulmer cranked riffs and Bad Brains fuse-fried punk and dub, shouldn't be the insult many might make of it. (That's supposing the phrase "black rock" isn't redundant or racist to begin with.)

It's a thing. An album, like a novel, something happened, like a really good movie by an auteur. You talk about it, it's a record to talk to you and enlighten you and entertain, yes, but yeah total illumination doesn't repeat. (Like Malcolm X meeting the white woman on the plane, she's a little disappointed in the lack of savagery in that sharp suit.) Can we blame Shabazz Palaces for delivering a very, very good album?

You do get caked up (too high) and faked up (you're being pimped) on the more taunting again "Youlogy" but none of the valleys have the same woozy and bitter dip as last year's raps. Maybe indie press success has been good for the narrator of these songs? It's definitely mellower this time out and the asphalt isn't quite as hot. You can walk through the end of the world with these ghosts, and it's actually refreshing they're more companions than mockers. Do I dare mix the artist with the art? As Sir Mix A Lot just spoke in City Arts, every city has a Broadway. That can be taken a couple of ways: But he meant our Broadway, not New York's. And our Broadway is pretty peaceful, conducive to creativity, a little mysterious, occasionally scary, but made that way by being on its own. Sort of like Butler in Seattle. Celebrate his peace and his peace given to us.

{Shabazz Palaces play on Thursday, 6/30 AND Friday, 7/1 at Neumos!}

Let's Nic at Nite with Hey Marseilles, Pearly Gate Music, star-tastic silent auctions and more for a good cause

imaginary liz — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:33:26 +0000

{Hey Marseilles photo by Jason Tang from the Imaginary Photo Pool}

Huge thanks to the folks that have put together the Nic at Nite party for letting us share a special invitation to their big soiree on Monday, May 23rd at the Fred Wildlife Refuge (128 Belmont Ave E ) in Capitol Hill. The evening is a celebration and fundraiser for Nicole Pieratt, amazing Seattle stylist, lady, etc. Earlier this year, Nicole was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer (at the age of 27) and has spent the last few months in treatment. To mark this special milestone, a group of her fans and friends have organized a fancy party complete with performances and silent auction prizes featuring a who's who of Seattle:

Special Live Performances by:
Hey Marseilles
Pearly Gate Music
DJ Erika White

Silent Auction Contributions from:
Mathews Winery, Mark Ryan Winery, Sub Pop, Teatro Zinzanni, Pacific Northwest Ballet, autographed works by Lance Mercer and Charles Peterson, photographic prints by Hayley Young, original artwork by Stacey Rozich, Drew Christie, Daniel Carillo, autographed vinyl from The Cave Singers, Campfire, Ok, and many more

Autographed vinyl! Original artwork and photographic prints! Sub Pop!

Helplessness Blues

Chris Estey — Tue, 03 May 2011 16:40:48 +0000

9.5

http://www.amazon.com/Helplessness-Blues-Fleet-Foxes/dp/B004LL1HM4/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

FF.jpg

Say you're trapped. By illness, by isolation. When I was an asthmatic kid, trapped in my parents' trailer on hot, pollen-piled summer days, the best thing I could think of was the Cascade Mountains. We would drive from the Tri-Cities to Seattle a few times during the year, and it was so refreshing to the spirit to see the snow-capped peaks, feel the brisk air pulling into the lungs, the 70s sounds of soft rock swirling on the car radio.

It was the perfect antidote to being the youngest in a family of hard-drinking black sheep, alone in the noise of my rebellious siblings, the deep bass of my father's jazz, the yelling between my parents. I would shroud myself in my sister's Neil Young albums, and dream about the next time we drove over "the Pass."

"So now I am older / than my mother and father," Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold sings on the opening track to their new (second) (Sub Pop) album, the (Shins, Built to Spill, et al) Phil Ek-produced Helplessness Blues. "Than they had their third daughter / Now what does that say about me?" Yeah, adults seemed to get older faster back then, right? But for those of us with so many burdens, health-wise, of spirit and body, we seek that bracing clear and clean moment.

The way the barbershop-of-monk's voices on this track float around Pecknold's hymn to himself, in ways musicians can describe but people who write about music alas can only describe and compare. "Oh man, what I used to be? Oh man, oh my, oh me." This is "Montezuma" and he sings of jewelry tarnished too quickly, thrown into the tomb too soon. It sounds like an endless Sunday, a kid stuck inside a house on a bright, sunny weekend day she can't be part of. It's all regret, but that doesn't mean it isn't awesomely beautiful.

Please trust me: This album is no burden. It isn't an album you have to like, or have an opinion of. You can leave it to others, it will be found otherwise. Its sonic riches never stop giving, so don't begin anything you can't finish. Morgan Henderson has brought in his upright bass and woodwinds since last we heard Robin's old friend Skyler Skjelset (acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin, water harp), Casey Wescott (keys, Marxophone, music box, Crumar bass, Moog, Tremoloa, Tibetan singing bowls, harmonium, etc.), Josh Tillman (vocals, drum kit, percussion), Christian Wargo (vocals, bass), and some additional players.

Musically, this is something to put on the shelf with Astral Weeks or Blue of anything any older friend set you on. Something comfortable, and maybe got you high or buzzed on caffeine, and played the full way through without speaking once (when they usually yammer all the time through everything else).

"Bedouin Dress" is about debt that can't be repaid, "the only regret of my youth." This second song doesn't sound like it's heading anywhere too interesting in the first few bars, but then some weird pipes clamber about and the lyrical metaphor is extended about (eternal) returning and it's like those alarming Paul Simon ballads about reluctant prophets that glimmered all over AM radio among the novelty songs and riff rock. "One day that's mine," as if the moment can be held. "In a geometric patterned dress." You begin to notice the patterns, on returning.

The title of the album gets carried along by each track, and its obvious link to Young's own "Helpless," one of his most autobiographical songs. "Sim Sala Bim" is a burst of chimey exoticism closer to their long-ago debut, reminding us that Fleet Foxes did the sophomore auteur-in-the-70s-style, when rock music fans had to wait three years between masterpieces. A taste of D. Jurado is in there, though, telling us it isn't a reissue track from a lost gem of an LP. Next up abruptly, "Battery Kinzie" thrushes with imagery of physical decay and spiritual servitude, with a timpani-driven sand march walking through the dawn ("do not wander through the dawn").

If I was making my own high concept mix of this album to remember how I want to, the way that Scott Miller (Game Theory, Loud Family) does with Pro Tools for songs in his nifty song-by-year book "Music: What Happened," it would probably begin on the fifth track, "The Plains/Bitter Dancer." RIYL: Richard Thompson's end of the rainbow falling from grace death waltzes, a more mordant Crosby Stills & Nash than your gentle bearded uncle is used to, the kind of FM transmission that chills you at the beginning of a Saturday morning in which you are to face the first day after a shattered relationship. "Tell me again my only son / Tell me again my only one," reminding us of the rose and the briar and Lord Randall in its first half, the murdered girl, the slain love, your heart's martyr. The second half of the medley is an Ennio Morricone gospel shuffle, the choir voices not even needing Joan Baez to accompany the finale after the execution of a couple of anarchists on screen.

"Helplessness Blues" is back to the too-smart, allergic, anti-cog of Simon's songs, its strumming could be from an urban basketball court, sent to parents who never thought their wayward son had a chance. My own parents are dead, but I have the feeling Pecknold's folks can hear the Nic Jones and Bert Jansch and John Jacob Niles in all of this and be proud of their depressed, so aware child. If he was my kid I would play this album over and over, giddy from a lad admitting things we wait generations for songwriters to confess. "I'll come back to you sometime soon, myself."

This is the center of the album (not just its initial single). That you can destroy something beautiful, or watch it being crushed and thrown into a fire and thus complicit in its demise, and know that you will benefit from this destruction. Because it means that you will have something to say, a song to sing, because something was sacrificed for you. And it may have been your own happiness. In order to remain helpless. As Nick Cave told me for the Karen Dalton In My Own Time liner notes, "Artists are salty bastards." Sometimes salt preserves what you want to make, but is far too strong to taste for those who love us. Thus, according to the most recent issue of Uncut (in an interview with Allan Jones), we find out that Pecknold lost love during the creation of the album this song is the title track for. And he continues to wonder throughout, could there have been any other way? "Someday I'll be like the man on the screen." A hero, perhaps? Even merely a lover?

"The Cascades" is a string-swept space without words, in which the final half of the album begins. It starts anew with "Lorelai" which at first seems like the necessary transcendent pop song required for a wide-screen drive-in end of a decade album like this. "Norwegian Wood" and Dylan's "Fourth Time Around" has been noted (thanks, Mr. Jones), but I hear a lot of Fleetwood Mac too, before and after Buckingham/Nicks.

This track would have probably been my first pick as a single track, even before you hear "I can see now / we were like dust on the window. I was like old news to you then." The great thing about all these groups I've been comparing the Fleet Foxes to, especially Mac and Simon, is how sad and nostalgic they seem for a moment just occurring. As if you need that sadness, to make the love meaningful. The lover just out of reach must be miles and years away, for the reunion to be so warm, so wanted, so real. I once remember reading a Japanese short story about a woman who only thought about her lover when he was gone. That was the only time her heart could articulate itself, was when he was present only in memory. Wish I could remember the name of that story.

"Someone You'd Admire" sounds like it would be a positive vibes song, but but it's really a chorale of resignation. A doomed one, at that. He probably won't be someone you admire, is what he's saying. Because the singer is trapped to this, to creating out of his pain and aloneness, and such a wish is as brief and hesitant to truly feel as this ballad. I once had a therapist who burst into tears -- twice -- because she said she pitied what my mind did to me. How it seemed to long to hurt me, to keep me from being good to myself, in her opinion. A counselor cries once, she might be having a bad day, you know? And another, a job counselor, who met with me after I got off the night shift, who said I smelled like death. I couldn't get that out of my mind (the smell of death) and she hadn't been emotional about it at all.

"When you talk you hardly even look in my eyes / in the morning." This will probably be the most popular song, "The Shrine/The Argument," which in its long, lean body cycles between near deathly quiet and big raga bursts of more timpani and chanting. "Green apples hang from the tree / they belong only to me." This is the song that sounds most like the world's casket lid closing, even if the earlier "The Plains/Bitter Dancer" was supposed to be the death dirge. The horns squonk and squirrel out from a black pyramid at the center of the track, like a slow dub of the ones in the Violent Femmes' notorious track "Black Girls," although I think Dolphy or Kenton's cacophonous work with Bob Graettinger might have been more in mind. No resolution, either, they just scamper off like half-stepped-on scorpions into the dimming corners of a sound-desert.

"Blue Spotted Tail" is still tear-stained, but it's a soft weeping after the long-pent burst, the blaze of sun faded behind the buildings now that you're back in the City. Pecknold softly hums, as it trains into Wargo's vocal arrangements for the only (near) straight-ahead rock song here, "Grown Ocean." This would probably be the easiest place for people to begin with the album, and it's telling about Fleet Foxes -- especially now -- that they chose to make it an anthemic epilogue, sweeter on the nerves and about licking wounds, but not beginning this inner odyssey with it. You have to earn it, the way that these musicians had to work so very hard to create something they would feel like owning. The most important thing to know is that they have. And now we have it, too.

{Fleet Foxes played to a SOLD OUT house at the Moore last night, and are playing another tonight (5/3)!}

Double-dip with The Head and the Heart this week!

imaginary victoria — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 18:14:18 +0000

If you were lucky enough to catch The Head and the Heart's sold-out show at Neumos a few months back, you know just how excited we are about this Friday.

Back in January, THatH took the stage at Neumos with Lemolo and Curtains For You, one of the first shows they played where we stood with fellow "I saw the Sonic Boom set last summer" fans and realized we didn't know most of the people in the room. Well, as the nation's well aware (yes, the nation, not just the Pacific Northwest anymore), this band has been going onward and upward on a steady pace since -- up to and including the current west coast tour that has them playing two nights in Seattle this weekend. On Friday, April 29th, THatH will be playing to a sold out Showbox with Lemolo and the The Devil Whale, and the next night finds them at the Moore (yep, that's sold out too) with Grand Hallway and Ivan & Alyosha. Both nights are sure to make the mark, but we're definitely excited that we've got tickets in our hot little hands for the Showbox version of this latest breeze-through-town installment from one of our new favorite hometown bands.

He Gets Me High

Chris Estey — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:15:48 +0000

8.5

http://www.amazon.com/He-Gets-High-Dum-Girls/dp/B004I3U7EY/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

dum-dum-girls-he-gets-me-high.jpg

Kristin "Dee Dee" Gundred and her in-shades art-babes are at the #2 spot in the current Billboard charts for this EP for a rare but giddy reason: a quick-change, yet supremely matured, transitional moment between full-lengths -- sounding bold and elegant after dense, terse debut I Will Be. And, telling from the three intoxicating originals and firm-shouldered cover of a Smiths classic, what I think will probably end up being one of the very best albums of 2011: Coming up next.

Since she left Rilo Kiley-mentored Grand Ole Party in the indie rock band glut of the past decade, Gundred has put on the paint-spattered motorcycle jacket and had quite a gas-choked rip around the music scene since. Probably figuring out that with her easy skills and fuzz-rock finesse she could dominate the rest with ease, her one-time one-gal band Dum Dum Girls first gladdened synthetical seven inch collectors with a smattering of singles and buzz. Then getting Link Wray/Blondie/Strangeloves band-baron Richard Gottehrer to help out with I Will Be, the latter must be thrilled to help produce an EP that is as bold a mini-/between album statement as fully fleshed out and dapper as He Gets Me High. I was there for the beautifully fat Gang of Four's Gold EP, for the absolutely assured one between the first two Pretenders albums; these were albums that took the magical mix of discovery and danger of their first records and went deep groove audacious in the post-punk era, perhaps proving that rock and roll really is an Extended Play medium. (Buy me a whiskey and we can argue those details.)

He Gets Me High is just that great, too, a giant leap forward onto the dance floor and into the after party, where the the bliss of opener "Wrong Feels Right" somehow blends early rockabilly Blondie with later "Dreaming" swankiness, and then pigging out on wicked romance with the title track (a "fix me up" anthem the Bangles would have walked like a whatever for). The apex of the cycle is the deeply concerned "Take Care Of My Baby," where the nurturing protagonist broods over her self-destructive Johnny Boyfriend like a classic Ronnie Spector ghetto handmaid. It's startling and steamy, and all of these songs exude the rebellion of late 50s girls gone rawk attitude with a whole lot of 60s stoner pop freak beat.

So why end ambitiously on a "take this!" straight-ahead cover of "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out," a Morrissey/Marr signature tune that even many Smiths fans can't resist? Because it sounds like the straight world about to crash into the counter-culture; a teenage melodrama built on William Blake's "London," where the emptiness of life has to burn out even if all over the concrete -- it's perfect for a modern Anglophile girl group to make its own. And Dee Dee, with her eager vocals jumping all over the minimalist drums, well... she and her gang almost punctures a sparkling leash through its mighty snout. Pretty bold, and about to blow up.

Fading Parade

Chris Estey — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:21:54 +0000

8.3

http://www.amazon.com/Fading-Parade-Papercuts/dp/B004IOP4A0/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

PaperCuts.jpg

This is probably an oversimplification, but it often seems that some bands are merely a great idea, and some bands are full of great ideas. Ideas are great, but they shouldn't be half-drawn caricatures simplified in order to sell, sell, sell. San Francisco's Papercuts is a band (the band being Jason Robert Quever and whoever and whatever he's playing with) with a lot of great ideas going on, echoing Moogs, the mnemonically unsettling Mellotron, shivering guitars, tape chopping, and apparitional (yet somehow apple-cheeked) vocals. Its pouty prettiness sure sells to me, but it doesn't appear to my ears anywhere near crypto-Warholian sold-out.

Having toured with Beach House, Grizzly Bear, and Camera Obscura (all like-minded bands in that they frolic wit song-form but still fulfill the emotional obligations of the songwriter), and gotten big ratings from the press (hello, 8.3 from Pitchfork for 2007's Can't Go Back; and "Good day, squire" for MOJO's four stars on last time's Can Have What You Want), I predict the California dream-rock of Fading Parade is soon going to find many a happy home. Get into it and perhaps get it out of your system early before you start hearing it in as many Barnes & Nobles and bistros as Teen Dream. It's no surprise Quever got much of his start handling recording for 4AD, and his day job is at his own home studio (recording artists such as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Port O'Brien, and many others).

But it's not all about a pleasing surface with Papercuts, and tracks on Fading Parade have the sort of substance other bands with pedigree in production lack. "Do What You Will" seems a terse rumination on a Crowleyian poseur who promotes self-magic with no mirror to see his or her lack of wardrobe; "I'll See You Later I Guess" sounds spectral at its core when maybe studying the leftovers of a relationship withered by the other's carelessness. That second into third track crest on Fading Parade is pretty steep, yet Quever has the goods to keep you feasting through the rest of the album, and then over again. I've had it a few weeks, and I've never played it through once. Always two or three times right after. Take that as present affirmation, sticking around.

20 words each on 11 of the Best Releases of 2010

Chris Estey — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:17:48 +0000

{Shabazz Palaces photo from the Three Imaginary Girls Flickr Pool by Jason Tang}

Through sheer quirk of fate and possibly my own fatally quirky tastes, the top spots for my four favorite records of the year were given to two separate EPs by two different bands. I'm going to start my Top 20 of 2011 list with a cheat; combining two albums for placement at #1 and #2. Just to obnoxiously make you utterly vigilant of it: the first two spots are taken up by two separate releases, but they're EPs that if combined with each other, tie with/become one release.

Oh, and I'm keeping all hype to 20 words to mirror the Top 20 list. And then I cheat again by having the first two releases described in 40 words, a combination of two 20 word reviews. (No, I haven't been studying Kabbalah with the Wu-Tang Clan.) Also: Mostly in order, but ask me again tomorrow. (The Damien Jurado could be anywhere on this list, for example.) And regional preference takes precedence (call that "fanzine love").

1. Shabazz Palaces, Shabazz Palaces & Of Light EPs
Cracked, uncanny hip-hop collages of unsettling mind-movies, Clockers meets Company Flow. "Juxtapositions of the digital and analog, hard drum-machine beats set against softer bongos or the resonant sweetness of an mbira." -- Jon Caramanica, The New York Times

Saturday's recommended {benefit} show: SubPopFest with Mudhoney, Fruit Bats, Shabazz Palaces, and more {12/4}

imaginary liz — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:28:18 +0000

It's far from hyperbolic to say that *the* place to be this Saturday is the Showbox. SubPop has put together an amazing line-up for an even more amazing cause: to celebrate the life of Andy Kotowitz {beloved member of the music community and SubPopper} and, more importantly, raise money for the Andy Kotowitz Family Foundation, which supports Andy’s wife, Jocelyn, and young daughter Anna.

The benefit show is this Saturday (December 4th) at The Showbox (Market) and will feature performances by some of the bands Andy was the A&R representative for, including: A-Frames/AFCGT, Fruit Bats, Mudhoney, Michael Yonkers, Pissed Jeans, Shabazz Palaces, Vetiver, and Wolf Eyes. This is an all-ages event, with doors at 7pm. Tickets are $20.

Tickets go on sale for SubPop fest for the Andy Kotowitz Family Foundation {noon today, 11/12}

imaginary liz — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:29:51 +0000

The music community is still reeling from the passing of Andy Kotowitz, a beloved member of the music community. It's wonderful to hear that his SubPop family has put together an amazing show to celebrate him and raise money for the Andy Kotowitz Family Foundation, which supports Andy’s wife, Jocelyn, and young daughter Anna.

The benefit show will be December 4th at The Showbox (Market) and will feature performances by some of the bands Andy was the A&R representative for, including: A-Frames/AFCGT, Fruit Bats, Mudhoney, Michael Yonkers, Pissed Jeans, Shabazz Palaces, Vetiver, and Wolf Eyes. This is an all-ages event, with doors at 7pm.

A line-up like that should not be missed and it will surely sell out quickly. Tickets are $20 and go on sale at noon today {11/12/10} via Ticketmaster.

Paying tribute to one of the good guys: Andy Kotowicz

imaginary liz — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 04:08:34 +0000

It's a small world, especially when your world is the Seattle music scene. It is an inarguable fact that just about everyone of us has a close friend in a band or who works at a club or is a part of one of the city's fine record labels. You and I and all of us are a friendly bunch so if you don't know so and so, you definitely have a friend who has shared many a drink with him or her (and raves about how fun he / she is).

It's not surprising that everyone in this town has been rocked to the core by the passing of Andy Kotowicz last week. Some folks, like myself, never had the chance to meet him personally, but know him from his time served as Vice President of Sales and Director of Marketing at Sub Pop. From the memories shared since his passing, he was an amazing person, as kind and caring as he was passionate and brilliant. Even though I had never met him, I still find myself profoundly touched by the tragic accident.

In case you hadn't already seen any of the below articles, I wanted to take a moment to post a few links offering some more insight into his charismatic character and how we can help his dear family and the causes that meant the most to him:

Information about donations in Andy's memory and the Andy Kotowicz Family Foundation

A fellow Sub Pop employee interviewed Andy a few years back

That's How We Burn

Chris Estey — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:29:47 +0000

7.8

http://www.amazon.com/Thats-How-We-Burn-Jaill/dp/B003ODKZPU/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

jaill.jpg

Underground veterans Jaill (made up of lead vocalist Vincent Kircher, along with unexplained players Austin Dutmer, Andrew Harris, and Ryan Adams) make a strange connect between shared hometown Milwaukee's alternative daddies Violent Femmes (think fast songs on the first, frat-loved album), and wordy garage art-rock bands like The Shins. The latter is the major discernible influence on the second and third tracks here, "Everyone's Hip" and "On The Beat" (the second sounding much like something from Chutes Too Narrow).

Strangely assertive-riffed first song, "The Stroller", deludes the listener into assuming things might get almost kind of metal on That's How We Burn, the axe-grinding seeming a little too broadly melodramatic in an opener for a band more at home with crunchy compositions guys like Scott McCaughey (Minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows) create.

Sort of how like the smoking girl with the shark hat on the beach on the cover might mix someone up into thinking this is the next batch of Girls, Dum Dum and/or Vivian. Instead, as the lyrics almost too-quickly unroll stories of "shooting up in bed," "she said you're a dog and it is your stick that has got me riled," "cheering you up is a wicked task" and their "take and leave it lifestyle(s)" reveal Kircher and his fellow musicians as perhaps the insouciant control freaks and co-dependents haunting those gals' guts or glory fables.

Besides the full-throttle of "The Stroller" (which does have an awesome paradox in its cognitive behavior advise of a chorus, "when you panic, do you count to ten / when you're surrounded, do you hold your breath"; one is bad, the other not), only the sort-of ballad "Summer Mess" is musically all speedy-hooked garage-beat punk pop.

I keep hitting repeat on songs, wanting to dive back into these terse, sometimes vicious (to self and others) words and worlds, picturing the basement lives spilling over into dark parties undone and new scenes becoming just another "house of sin." It's to Jaill's storytelling skills these skinned knee tales are so inviting, but I think a lot of that has to do with both the amounts of verse being thrown out keeping you attentive, along with the quality of never letting a riff go on too long in any direction before being ganged up with a vocal crescendo or a six string mash up.

I will admit I don't have many people I could recommend this album to easily; it's not an easy full length to peg. It's not a category or genre; it's a cranky, well-made chunk of struggle and bliss. I wouldn't hesitate to see them live and I can't stop playing it, and I'll just leave it at that.

{Jaill is playing in Seattle with The Hold Steady on August 18, at The Showbox}

Underground veterans Jaill (made up of lead vocalist Vincent Kircher, along with unexplained players Austin Dutmer, Andrew Harris, and Ryan Adams) make a strange connect between shared hometown Milwaukee's alternative daddies Violent Femmes (think fast songs on the first, frat-loved album), and wordy garage art-rock bands like The Shins. The latter is the major discernible influence on the second and third tracks here, "Everyone's Hip" and "On The Beat" (the third sounding much like something from Chutes Too Narrow).

Things look CocoRosie this Friday night, June 25

Chris Estey — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:11:03 +0000

Maybe with drawn-on beards and no doubt charismatically-weird, CocoRosie are coming to the Showbox at the Market this Friday night.

Sisters Sierra and Bianca's new album Grey Oceans has caused a minor fuss with those now feigning boredom with their quasi-outsider "schtick," but as someone who missed liking them when it was keen to do so, I have had a lot of fun with it. Admittedly, most of my love is for "Smokey Taboo" and "Hopscotch," the former kind of stupid but really fetching if you imagine it as tender teenage poetry set to soft bit-hop, and the latter annoying and compelling with a Shirley Temple-like sample leading into Bjork-style warbling. The rest of it alternately pleasures awkwardly and artfully, and that's damn straight-OK with me. Until someone hips me to an earlier recorded era in which they blossomed more brilliantly, I'll enjoy CocoRosie now in my late-discovery ignorance.

With Cibelle opening, CocoRosie should be fun to see live with a bellyful of absinthe or a mildly hallucinogenic brandy, but the good news is that it is an ALL AGES show as well. As long as you damned kids stay out of the bar. Venue opening up at 8 PM, $20 advance and $22 at the door.

Destroyer of the Void

Chris Estey — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:44:08 +0000

7.8

http://www.amazon.com/Destroyer-Void-Blitzen-Trapper/dp/B003GEXBIU/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

blitzentrapper.jpg

For their fifth full length for a band that has been around since 2000, Blitzen Trapper come on like a mighty gust of minty fresh barf. When I listen to Destroyer of the Void I am trainspotting back to the bedroom I shared with my brothers with scattered piles of gatefold LPs surrounding me, Roger Dean covers gleaming beneath the overhead, LA cowboy band member-photographed inner sleeves toss about, studying the thick lengths of tracks on vinyl containing arcane mixtures of big beat dinosaur stomp, keyboard sheen and swirl, folk-pop snappiness, misty roads into musical necropolis. These records are the cities of the dead now, buried by three chord punk and music videos and busted-bass mix tapes, and once piled up ubiquitously in record stores across the land to await some form of damnation have probably all ended up in Blitzen Trapper's Portland. There they and Colin Meloy and other fearlessly nostalgic musician dudes have probably emptied out the long platter bins to swipe riffs, bang the bong and blast the beer to, and reincarnate them in songs like the opening title track to Destroyer of the Void, which sounds nearly Wagnerian by way of Wings.

Eric Earley is the long-time chief of this tribe, and on last year's equally schizoid-diverse Sub Pop debut Furr he delivered songs less ambitious but no less diverse and digressive, the peak being Nietzschean bubblegum pop "God And Suicide." This time for me it's the presence of Tom Petty-styled fall from grace young girl blues "Evening Star" and the Celtic raise a church to burn it "Heaven and Earth." They are the poles of flesh and spirit that keep the lengthy, suite-like sequence from getting too (pick your prog poison) "Dragon's Song" or not enough Neil Young lover's lament ("Laughing Lover," "Lover Leave Me Drowning"). Earley and his five main collaborators may be trying to cram too much legacy into their albums, but as their chops become as top as their inspirations are broad, it never fails to entertain while his poetic lyrics enlighten.

Crafted in Mike Coykendall's attic studio in between art projects like a play based on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 number one mock-fest Manos: Hands of Fate (if the bio materials are to be believed), the musician/engineer makes it all sound LARP viking morning in White Pass crisp, taking Destroyer in the Void as seriously as his work with Bright Eyes or M Ward. Strings arranged by Heather Woods Broderick ("Efterklang") sound bathyklopian, while she and Alela Diane add astrobleme backing vocals to "The Tree."

Furr and its excited tying burning coals Blackbeard-style into the soft beard of Pac NW rock may have brought Blitzen Trapper the attention of Rolling Stone and late night television, but it's the convincing self-mythology in their sound on Destroyer that will place them as a new trace memory in kids discovering their records two or three decades from now.

Bigger And Blackerer

Chris Estey — Tue, 25 May 2010 07:15:42 +0000

8.1

http://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Blackerer-David-Cross/dp/B003EJ0GJY/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

davidcross.jpg

Do you know a David Cross? Sometimes I think we all must. He's a really smart guy in your social circle (usually tied to the music scene) who fights with depression and being a drunken jack-ass, usually has the shaved head and National Health framed glasses, showing both a feather-touch sensitivity and inflamed sense of outrage when someone blindly passes along a notion.

A real "David Cross" isn't just pissed off and double-edged resistant, though, he's usually capable of delivering the most devastating, transgressive, vicious, and wild joke about something completely inappropriate. His morbid fascination with his and others' cruelty can be deflated by one cathartic guffaw at the expense of our own blind, insane, reckless way through a pretty awesome place called earth. Where crack babies, gay bashers, mean cops who think they're cool, and especially the religious just crap it all up.

Cross is the king of the socially conscious jeremiad, a classically necrotizing jester who uses his third album (still on Sub Pop) Bigger And Blackerer to confess his own love for watching the TV show Intervention whilst bummed out on Vicodin; mocks rehab and then mocks audience members mocking the desperate need for rehab by laughing about it in a way that rubs him wrong; admitting he loves to drink but casually jokes about hitting his pants in this state when taking his pooch for a walk; the utter ridiculousness of pedophilia ("You have skin like alabaster?" "WHAT IS ALABASTER?!"); "I Can't Get Beer In Me," about the de-evolutions made by the Coors company on behalf of the utter fucking morons who must be drinking it (title refers to its recent "widening" of the hole on top of the can so you can "get more beer in you faster so you can start hitting quicker"); whether or not something as not funny as date rape should have a UK ad campaign saying that you shouldn't drink too much or "you might do something you will more than regret" (how can you "more than regret something"? Become so in denial you're somehow proud of it?); and at least a couple of moments that feel like a hot poker in the entrails (license plate with "NGR LVR," I'll just leave it at that). Was that funny? Yes, because in a way it scares the shit out of you someone can crack up about it and crack you up about it but it's so wrong. Oh, speaking of scary: Cross' new favorite sub-genre of porn, exemplified by My Ass Is Haunted, the new combination of soft core and slasher films. He's not making this up, but I'd rather hear him riff on these movies than ever see one.

Misses: Not too many on the album, except at times a good chunk of proselytizing comes before any sinister guffaw. And Mormons and Scientologists are satirically passe since South Park skewed them so well, right? Well, maybe not, they're still getting richer than hell on really dumb ideas and have horrible political influence in a country that should have legalized gay marriage and pot smoking at least three decades ago.

Bigger And Blackerer begins with a fake show tune (well, it's not fake, it's really a hammy show tune, but it meanders off into jokes about cosmonauts where Mike Douglas never went before) and is a collection of material from two Boston shows at the Wilbur Theatre. A Boston crowd is good for Cross because it will give him love but won't take a whole lot of shit. A nice eye to eye feel, as opposed to the soft indie guys who get slaughtered on Patton Oswalt albums (not that I don't love the hell out of those moments). It was shown on Epix (whatever channel that is, I gave up cable due to news reports like one called "Why Animals Attack!") on April 10 and is available both as this little old CD and a DVD. Like his long-winded, audience-baiting audio version of I Drink For A Reason (half of its multi-disc set filled with insults for people who purchase books on tape; it's actually some of his best work in that format, bitch-slapping lazy consumers like me in my own home, person to person), the various formats have material unique to their own release. Like those Kiss solo albums with all those different paintings of the band on their covers, but each had different songs. Wow.

Nothing Hurts

Chris Estey — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:07:05 +0000

7.7

http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Hurts-Male-Bonding/dp/B003D85E8Y/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

malebonding.jpg

For fans of their split 7 " with the Dum Dum Girls (track "Before It's Gone" not included here), Dalston, Great Britain-spawned three piece Male Bonding share their musical camaraderie on their Sub Pop debut. Nothing Hurts doesn't sound like it at all, as romantic torture is the content within the form, but that has been the basis of the blues and its derived forms in bands even less Buzzcocky.

John Arthur Webb, Kevin Hendrick, and Robin Silas Christian are creating fitful new heavy punky pop that yes, has that triangle in the back cover art, and of course, the trio would look simply smashing snogging with the Vivian Girls. But does it (prepare the rubbish for flinging at your reviewer) "rock"? Yes, yes, it does. "Your Contact" has a slowing-speeding bass-line as gizzard-poking as anything by Dead Moon, and "Franklin" has ruminations set to a back-beat you can slap on your best friend's back to near the front of the stage. Loss of innocence is tracked from "All Things This Way" to "Nothing Used To Hurt." No Age and Red Sparowes mixer and mastering fellow Pete Lyman helps raise the song-forms above the caterwaul without truncating the kick from the amphetamine minds behind it.

Dalston has had a fervent indie scene among its flat parties and immigrant culture for awhile, and it was a matter of time before one of these particular gnarly neighborhood snollygosters snared a United States release. The album comes out this Tuesday, May 11 in the States, and if you're tired of punk either too testosterone-infused (screaming brainless hardcore) or too effete to care about (I'm not naming names), Male Bonding offer a first full length with universal rock appeal beneath the buzz.

Grey Oceans

Chris Estey — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:37:13 +0000

7.8

http://www.amazon.com/Grey-Oceans-CocoRosie/dp/B003D8MZ86/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

cocorosie.jpg

Grey Oceans sounds like a night in the desert, which makes sense, as CocoRosie's fourth full length is released after Sierra and Bianca Casady moved from France (where they started the band) to New Mexico. Back in their home country but currently touring the UK, Grey Oceans sounds as travel-amok as the journeys the sisters created the music on, from Germany to Australia, Buenos Aires to New York, and of course their beloved Paris.

There has been some early negativity about this release, as CocoRosie hops from Touch and Go to Sub Pop, and unveiled some arguably gauche cover art. (Like this isn't their usual form of taste-terrorism [see the shit-storm about unicorns and vomit on the cover of 2005's Noah's Ark]; apparently Internet indie-gurus are amnesiac or bored and itchy for a brouhaha.) Their musical use of children's toys and voices, pin-struck harps, precious piano, sampled subtle cacophony, and vocal phrasing which darts from art pop to hip hop all in a hashish haze, are best and most flagrantly exemplified by tracks two and three here, "Smokey Taboo" and "Hopscotch." This combination, which they may not own but certainly were contemporaneous with their ascent, strikes some as dilettante. Where Joanna Newsom can get away with a three album set due to her being seen as a "serious artists" (due to allegiances? Pleasing racial homogeny? I'm not sure but can guess), CocoRosie have more baggage, being one of those "eternally new" bands (they've been at it since 2003) and taking on the wrath towards Williamsburg (where Bianca lived and partied very ironically). With Sierra studying opera singing early on, their initial work mock-celebrating Native American spirituality, and embracing the French language and style of sources as sound tchotchkes, they may be seen by skulking rock boys as frivolous hodgepodge. These are probably the same lads who once scrunched their freckled noses and griped, "Why must Nouvelle Vague play cover versions?" and "Vampire Weekend appropriate seriously!" Their only research-gym work outs being cleverly topical cardio, which is why their fight carries no weight.

CocoRosie start Grey Oceans with a weepy, gauzy ballad, "Trinity's Crying," and the album's tone is a little too set from there. This is a quieter, less freaky work than the catawampus of Noah's Ark (no Antony from the Johnsons or Devendra this time). But the Gnostic playground where weird mystical observations spray from unexpected pop culture potholes keeps one listening throughout, as the creepy stuff and melodic stretches invite a frequent revisitation.

(CocoRosie's new album is out this Tuesday, May 11, and Sierra and Blanca and their musicians will be playing Seattle to promote it on June 25 at the Showbox.)

There has been some early negativity about this release, as CocoRosie hops from Touch and Go to Sub Pop, and unveiled some arguably gauche cover art. (Like this isn't their usual form of taste-terrorism [see the shit-storm about unicorns and vomit on the cover of 2005's Noah's Ark]; apparently Internet indie-gurus are amnesiac or bored and itchy for a brouhaha.) Their musical use of children's toys and voices, pin-struck harps, precious piano, sampled subtle cacophony, and vocal phrasing which darts from art pop to hip hop all in a hashish haze, are best and most flagrantly exemplified by tracks two and three here, "Smokey Taboo" and "Hopscotch." This combination, which they may not own but certainly were contemporaneous with their ascent, strikes some as dilettante. Where Joanna Newsom can get away with a three album set due to her being seen as a "serious artist" (due to allegiances? Pleasing racial homogeny? I'm not sure but can guess), CocoRosie have more baggage, being one of those "eternally new" bands (they've been at it since 2003) and taking on the wrath towards Williamsburg (where Bianca lived and partied very ironically). With Sierra studying opera singing early on, their initial work mock-celebrating Native American spirituality, and embracing the French language and style of sources as sound tchotchkes, they may be seen by skulking rock boys as frivolous hodgepodge. These are probably the same lads who once scrunched their freckled noses and griped, "Why must Nouvelle Vague play cover versions?" and "Vampire Weekend appropriate seriously!" Their only research-gym work outs being cleverly topical cardio, which is why their fight carries no weight.

Avi Buffalo

Chris Estey — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:19:40 +0000

8.2

http://www.amazon.com/Avi-Buffalo/dp/B003A8ONTI/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

avibuffalo10-album.jpg

Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg was a Long Beach skateboarder who played a solo set at a local vegan restaurant. Eventually his fear of damage caused by "shredding it" led to long hours making noise out of his guitar, the kind of noise boys in their late teens particualrly love. That's when it all came together for he and collaborators Rebecca Coleman (keyboards/co-vocals), Arin Fazio (bass), and drummer Sheridan Riley. It so happened though that their music caught the ear of Elliott Smith and Emmylou Harris engineer Aaron Embry, who heard the (ahem) "old soul" in the freaky kid and helped him make the first ten songs on his "self-titled" (via moniker) debut sound like a missing masterpiece of L.A. suburban graffiti-garage pop.

Out on April 27, 2010 via Sub Pop, expectations for Avi Buffalo are already intense, due to first vinyl single "What's In It For?" a luxurious near six minute strip of sweet sizzling summer psyche-pop-folk. A slacking ode to a girl who is "tiny and has lips like two piecesof bacon" from a really smart and smart-ass boy who has raided his parents LP collection as if putting together a Beastie Boys album, it sounds like the longest best day with the sweetest girlie backing vocals sweetening the lassitude, that begins by trying to mess up a girl's plans and become a "cold tear in her rawhide." "What's in it for someone with nothing to do?" {listen}

The rest of the album isn't nearly as anthemic, but its combination of eternal teenage Beatnik horn-dog confessionals and Beck-style lyrical improvisation make "Five Little Sluts," "Coaxed," and heady, lugubrious closer "Where's Your Dirty Mind" more literate than licentious. Avi and his band have a hands-on approach to the abstract, and his Freudian-dream imagery melts well into his expressionist guitar playing floating all around loose, inspired, near-jam rhythms from Avi Buffalo.

I Will Be

Chris Estey — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:30:36 +0000

7.5

http://www.amazon.com/I-Will-Be-Dum-Girls/dp/B0035FBBIC/?=wwwthreeimagi-20

iwillbe.jpg

After a saucy seven inch and a couple of cuddly EPs, Sub Pop is releasing the eleven song full length by Los Angeles' own Dee Dee, AKA Dum Dum Girls. "Dum Dum Boys" was an Iggy Pop tune, and I Will Be sounds like an LP Pop would have grown up speeding and bleeding to at backyard Michigan parties if drum machines and openly assertive party girls could go back in time.

If you heard those earlier, shorter releases on HoZac, Captured By Music, and Zoo Music, you know what Dum Dum Girls do: Sweet, dense basement femme power pop but with a Nico on the four-track vibe. Dee Dee herself sounds like she grew up on her parents' girl group LPs and bummed vanilla cloves, New Wave French cinema and imported Japanese rice candies.

Dum Dum Girls pretty much is Dee Dee, but assistant Andrew Miller smears charcoal guitar along the white vinyl uppers of "Bhang Bhang, I'm A Burn Out," "It Only Takes One Night," "Rest Of Our Lives," and my favorite song here, the slower-tempo, mid-60s devotion "Rest Of Our Lives." The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' guitarist Nick Zinner grinds out a bit for "Yours Alone" on guitar too, and Dee Dee's husband Brandon Welchez (Crocodiles) strums as well, and sings a duet with his mod mate on the very funny and odd "Blank Girl." Because this is El Lay, a sincere but still shiny Sonny & Cher song rounds out the half hour set, being the only near-ballad in the bunch.

I do have to throw in my own leap for joy here, in the return of Richard Gottehrer, co-producer and co-mixer and no doubt studio muse. Even if his contact with Dee Dee was basically in blessing her home demos in name and levels only, it's a magical name, one that's also on many of my and no doubt her favorite records, such as The Go-Gos and Blondie first albums. Gottehrer founded Sire Records with Seymour Stein, giving us The Ramones and so many other great "alternative chartbuster" bands that I'm hoping this will be his return to planet pop. His association with Dum Dum Girls' I Will Be makes it doubly a debut to cheer about.

Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore bring Kentucky love to The Crocodile Tuesday, March 30

Chris Estey — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:37:15 +0000

Dear Companion, the recent rustic collaboration between young multi-instrumentalists and co-vocalists Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore, was recently praised by Pitchfork for its creative attack on mountaintop removal mining in their home state of Kentucky. With two astonishing, cello-stoked opening tracks ("Something, Somewhere, Sometime" and "My Wealth Comes To Me") the album protests artfully on the side of beauty and love for Cold Springs and Lexington boys Moore and Sollee for their Sub Pop debut, against an outrageously exploitative economic system of environmental damage.

This is the opener for the uniquely thematic Sub Pop album, and also my favorite track on the record: