The Stranger's music critics' picks for February 6-12 shows in Seattle.
by Stranger Things To Do Staff
In addition to the snow, there's also plenty of excellent live music to experience outside in Seattle this week. Our music critics recommend everything from the musical equivalent of Rookie Mag (Cherry Glazerr) to the chill and sparsely beautiful music of composer Arvo Pärt to a Valentine's Day show featuring Lavender Country. Read more about our critics' picks below and click through for music samples and ticket links. For more options, check out all of the big-name shows happening in Seattle this month, our complete music calendar, or our Valentine's Day calendar.
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TUESDAY
Aluk Todolo, Insect Ark, Caligula Cartel, Serpentent
There’s a fine line between meditative and hypnotic versus just straight up repetitive and monochromatic. Black metal often aims for the former but winds up the latter. One of black metal’s biggest hurdles in that regard is making their trebly sheen of distorted guitars convey some sort of dimension. France’s Aluk Todolo understand that creating a transcendent experience requires creating an aural illusion of space. Taking structural cues from krautrock masters like Can and Neu!, Aluk Todolo find locking percussive grooves and then use those sturdy foundations to explore the abrasive textures, crusty dynamics, and dissonant melodies of kvlt metal. At a low volume, their albums are soothing. At a high volume, they induce a perpetual jolt of adrenaline. But witness them in the flesh and you’ll be transported across the astral plane. BRIAN COOK
Cory Hanson of Wand with Guests
Cory Hanson’s played a key role in shaping Wand into one of America’s most luminescent psych-rock groups. The LA-based vocalist/guitarist and Ty Segall accomplice in the Muggers possesses one of those dreamy, faraway voices that have levitated countless psychedelic bands over the last five decades. Over three full-lengths, Hanson helped Wand attain a perfect balance of tunefulness and trippiness. (Did you catch their spectacular set at last year’s Capitol Hill Block Party? Wowee zowee.) Hanson’s debut solo album for Drag City, The Unborn Capitalist from Limbo, swerves away from Wand’s wilder tendencies and aims for a more acoustic and orchestral sort of baroque pop that lands in the sweet intersection between the mellower moments on Love’s Forever Changes and the Left Banke’s sumptuous, overcast balladry. S’beautiful. DAVE SEGAL
The Gaslamp Killer with Trackstar the DJ
The Gaslamp Killer’s rise from wildly eclectic underground DJ and producer to galvanizing fixture at large EDM festivals has been a surprising but welcome development. The LA-based selector—who’s also somehow opening for Run the Jewels tonight—is a distinctively manic presence behind the decks. He gives sporadic running commentary on the cuts he’s spinning while busting extravagant interpretative moves to their exciting sounds. An epicurean vinyl hound (peep his Crate Diggers episode on YouTube) who’s championed by Britain’s esteemed Finders Keepers crew, GLK is the rare jock who can combine super-geeky knowledge of psych rock, world/library music, funk, hiphop, drum ‘n’ bass, etc. with crowd-stoking theatrics. You will leave his sets enlightened and sweaty. DAVE SEGAL
Run The Jewels with Gas Lamp Killer, Gangsta Boo, Nick Hook, Cuz
From a certain angle, consistency, even at a high level, can look a lot like stagnation—a conundrum facing many long-running acts. But Run the Jewels, the power duo comprising New York alt-rap legend El-P and fierce veteran Atlanta lyricist Killer Mike, are still finding fertile ground on their third full-length. They’ve done so through a knack for collaboration with everyone from Zack de la Rocha to Trina and Kamasi Washington, and a general abrasiveness that, despite breaking through to festival-sized audiences, shows their drive to separate themselves from the radio-friendly horde. The tag team has been around long enough to know that evolution is necessary, but for the moment, they’re still riding high. TODD HAMM
Tyvek, Fred Thomas, SSDD, Vasquez!
With a decade-plus of touring and recording under their belt, Detroit’s Tyvek are elder statesmen in punk’s establishment, and their work on last year’s Origin of What LP reveals a perpetually restless band scavenging about on the genre’s outskirts. Revolving around guitarist Kevin Boyer, the band has seen nearly 25 members to date, which speaks to Boyer’s relentless commitment to keep Tyvek’s sound equally classic and current, at times calling to mind Parquet Courts at their most unhinged. Rounding out the bill are the Ann Arbor-via-Montreal bedroom pop-rock stylings of Fred Thomas and local punk stalwarts SSDD and Vasquez! NICK ZURKO
WEDNESDAY
Aesthetic Mess: Master Bedroom, DJ Goo Goo, DJ Jermaine
Seattle’s foremost post-punk night returns with a live performance by Master Bedroom (aka Sterling Calliér), whose ramshackle, bedroom-fi rock ricochets around your dome with the immediacy of early Guided by Voices, early White Fence, and R. Stevie Moore. Master Bedroom is an eccentric musician with an excess of energy and off-kilter songwriting chops, and I expect very good things from him this year, with a concomitant rise in his profile. Goo Goo and Jermaine, as always, spin a fascinating assortment of post-punk, weird dub, minimal wave, and other mutant subgenres. DAVE SEGAL
Cherry Glazerr with Slow Hollows
It’s easy to regard Cherry Glazerr with skepticism. They’ve got a candy-sweet name, the frontwoman is an actress (Margaux on Transparent), and they achieved liftoff faster than most, but that’s what happens when a fashion designer (Yves Saint Laurent’s Hedi Slimane) digs a band and uses their music in a campaign. Fortunately, 19-year-old Clementine Creevy’s combo deserves the exposure. In the context of the Los Angeles music scene, they slot between Missing Persons and Dum Dum Girls by weaving garage pop and new wave with a touch of the darker stuff. On their third record, Apocalipstick, Creevy recalls Sinéad O’Connor as she wraps her swooping soprano around songs about gleeful slobs and social-media addicts. If Rookie magazine were a band, it would sound like this. KATHY FENNESSY
Forms: Tokimonsta & Cri
LA’s TOKiMONSTA (aka Jennifer Lee) earned beat-freak cred with releases on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder imprint and the Ramp label, but lately she’s moved up to Ultra and glossed up her sound a bit. Recent material like Half Shadows and Desiderium still sounds quirky compared with most mainstream hiphop and neo-R&B, but the guest female and male vocalists show that Lee’s angling to get higher approval ratings with norms. Nevertheless, TOKiMONSTA crafts luscious electronic music that radiates a winsome funkiness and melodic insouciance. Her work’s lost some edge, but it’s still engaging in a way that Grimes and Julia Holter fans can embrace. DAVE SEGAL
Music Beyond Borders: Voices from the Seven
The Seattle Symphony will perform a free concert featuring the music of the countries whose citizens were denied entry to the U.S. under the recent executive order (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen). They write, "During the last week, the arts community across the country has been coming together in meaningful ways following the recent executive order restricting travel and immigration from certain countries. At the Seattle Symphony, we are inspired to add our voice, with the hope that we can bring together our community to celebrate the freedom of expression and open exchange of ideas which the arts have always stood for, especially in times of division and conflict." The free tickets sold out within hours of announcement, but the concert will be streamed live on Facebook.
WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY
Pinback
Pinback have a sound that exists in its own vacuum. A clean, well-ordered, and precise sound. The San Diego duo of Rob Crow and Zach Smith fold and unfold an audible origami. Vocals are placid and sedate, guitar strings are muted with palms; they pick through sequences, pinpoint and serene. TRENT MOORMAN
THURSDAY
Acapulco Lips, Great Spiders, Snuff Redux, Happy Times Sad Times
I haven’t been able to get anyone excited about Acapulco Lips—what a goddamn shame. Except for my mother. I gave her the band’s CD for her birthday, and she says she loves it and cruises around listening to it for her cruising music. They hollow out the Shangri-Las and pour in some spiky surf chords, some Jesus and Mary Chain fuzz, a drummer going Keith Moon–crazy on the fills, and a vocalist (Maria-Elena Juarez) who sounds like she’s singing into a pay phone receiver dangling from its metal cord across the boardwalk from the beach while the sun goes down and the sinister stars wink in. Sometimes she makes sense and sometimes she doesn’t. But with all that going for them, who needs puny sense? Hi, Mom! Tach it up! ANDREW HAMLIN
An Evening with Dark Star Orchestra
Dark Star Orchestra keep the indomitable legacy of the Grateful Dead twinkling with their spot-on tribute concerts. They plunder the mother lode of the jam-band progenitors' vast output for Deadheads who miss the real deal or for those unfortunates who never had the chance to witness them live. DSO's MO is to replicate momentous Dead set lists from the group's deep archives, and then nail every facet of the music. Clearly, DSO have their inspiration's wonderfully tight/loose chops, fluid sense of time and space, and that all-important stamina to keep on truckin' through the transitive nightfall of diamonds. DAVE SEGAL
Loscil, Benoit Pioulard, Bardo:Basho
Vancouver sound scientist Loscil—a name aptly derived from “looping oscillator”—rolls into town to give a performance of his brand of immersive ambient electronic music. Switching with ease between ambient soundscapes and gently chugging, ethereal four-to-the-floor techno, Loscil (aka Scott Morgan) creates environmentally informed music that envelops the listener in swaths of luscious chords and sounds as he plumbs the depths of the oceans and soars through the sky for sonic inspiration. Having released his 12th album, Monument Builders, on venerable Chicago imprint Kranky last year, Loscil will be joined by local electronic wizards Bardo:Basho and fellow Kranky artist Benoît Pioulard. All three musicians draw music fans from across a wide range of genres as they create music that appeals even to those not typically drawn to electronic music. NICK ZURKO
FRIDAY
Dirt Nasty, All-Star Opera, Off The Dome, Sonny Bonoho, Speaker Child, DJ Indica Jones
Remember when Simon Rex was a VJ on MTV? Which he used as a launchpad to get his pretty face on various shows like Felicity and What I Like About You? And then segued into rap as Dirt Nasty, his sleazy alter ego? It’s of the tongue-in-cheek, white-boy, party-song variety (his friend Mickey Avalon got him into it), and the inane subject matter ranges from cougars (“My favorite ladies purr like a vintage Mercedes”) to snorting cocaine and wearing gold chains (“1980”). He’s collaborated with Avalon on various projects (see Dyslexic Speedreaders), as well as others that include Jack Splash, Cisco Adler, Lil Coochie, Ke$ha, and (most notably) Riff Raff and Andy Milonakis in Three Loco. As you can imagine by said collabs, this show will surely make for some high entertainment, even if it lacks anything at all thought provoking. LEILANI POLK
Galactic with The Bright Light Social Hour
Everyone’s favorite New Orleans jam band is back, no doubt revitalized by this month’s Mardi Gras celebration. With 20 years of recording behind them, Galactic have honed a polyglot approach to moving bodies and inspiring smiles, as they cook up a bouillabaisse of funk, blues, rock, jazz, and hiphop while strutting with marching-band brio. Their 2015 album, Into the Deep, is a slick reiteration of their strengths and includes guest vocals by Macy Gray and Mavis Staples. It’s doubtful those distinctive divas will join the group tonight, but Galactic are such a galvanizing live enterprise, that should be a moot point. DAVE SEGAL
POD BLOTZ, Bloom Offering, Cruel Diagonals
Tonight’s bill is loaded with intriguing electronic music that aims to subtly disturb your complacent sense of well-being. Pod Blotz (aka San Francisco visual artist/musician Suzy Poling) put on a stunning performance at last year’s Trip Metal festival in Detroit with her surreal, sinister productions that dispense with industrial and minimal wave’s hokey signifiers and expose the essence of terror and alienation. If you’ve always found the Liquid Sky soundtrack to be too cheerful, you’ll love Pod Blotz. Similarly, Seattle’s Bloom Offering (Nicole Carr) summons distortion-heavy, industrial wastelands in her finely wrought compositions, evoking the poignancy of collapsing buildings and psyches at the end of their tether. DAVE SEGAL
Tashi Dorji, Plankton Wat, Lori Goldston
A Bhutanese guitarist residing in Asheville, North Carolina, Tashi Dorji wrings sparse, spidery tones from his instrument, which makes him sound as if he’s surreptitiously giving the middle finger to Western ideas of tuning and harmony. Fracture and unpredictability are Dorji’s métier, with his compositions unfurling, against great odds, into something resembling ungainly beauty. His collab with percussionist Tyler Damon, Both Will Escape, was one of 2016’s highlights, showcasing Dorji’s noisier, more chaotic inclinations. Portland’s Plankton Wat began as a laid-back psych-rock band that updated the jam aesthetic of the Grateful Dead and the space-trekking sojourns of Pink Floyd. Now PW’s down to guitarist Dewey Mahood (ex–Eternal Tapestry, Edibles), and you’d best believe he’s going to keep the plangent vibes flowing. Stranger Genius Award winner Lori Goldston is a master cellist who’s the only musician besides Kurt Cobain to play with both Nirvana and Earth. Her lugubrious improvisations will shred your heartstrings. DAVE SEGAL
SATURDAY
Ace Frehley with Enuff Z'Nuff
Rock history hasn’t been all that kind to Ace Frehley. The original lead guitarist of KISS, he left the outfit in 1982, skirting the band’s awkward makeup-free years, but returned in the 1990s before splitting again in 2002. In the wake of these lineup changes (and Gene Simmons’s monthly media gaffes), it’s easy to forget just how good those first few KISS albums were, thanks in no small part to Frehley, whose entry in the band’s 1978 quartet of solo LPs was far and away the best. Frehley still tours, playing classic KISS songs like “Love Gun” and “Cold Gin,” albeit without the Starman makeup he made famous. JOSEPH SCHAFER
Kinski, Dreamsalon, Pink Parts
After nearly 20 years as a band, Seattle’s Kinski continue to deliver groovy, kraut-tinged grunge riffs. Their vast psychedelic sprawl recalls early/mid-1990s Sonic Youth’s noise-rock dirges, sometimes peppered with prog flourishes or what I like to call “long-form flute breakdowns.” At its best, Dreamsalon’s scrappy, garage post-punk sounds like a more toned-down, Flying Nun Records version of the Birthday Party. Armed with swampy, ramshackle guitar and sinister bass lines, Dreamsalon’s ghoulish Morricone-in-space grooves always prove worthwhile. Rounding out this solid bill of locals, newish band Pink Parts churn out direct and powerful feminist-punk/hardcore jams. Their demo is forcefully dynamic, and a video of a recent show points to 1990s riot-grrrl/queercore bands like Team Dresch or Tribe 8. BRITTNIE FULLER
Lavender Country Valentine's Day
The world wasn’t ready for Lavender Country back in 1973 when their very queer country album first came out. At the time, musician Patrick Haggerty played some gigs up and down the coast, sold 1,000 copies of the album, and then went about his life. But in 2014, his groundbreaking music was rediscovered and rereleased, and now you can hear songs like “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears” live and in person. Haggerty is a phenomenal entertainer and storyteller, and his decades of adventures as an activist have further enriched his performances with meaning. MATT BAUME
Reel Big Fish, Anti-Flag, Ballyhoo!, Pkew Pkew Pkew
For y’all pop punk and third wave ska-rnivorous kids who came of age in the mid-1990s, it looks like tonight might be the time to re-pierce yer bottom lip and/or eyebrow, dig out your porkpie hat, and see if them wide-legged short britches and braces still fit! Uh, who’d have ever thunk third wave ska would still be a thing two decades later? Well, here it is and still skankin’. We got Canadian pop-punk band Pkew Pkew Pkew, radio-friendly pop (and reggae) from Ballyhoo!, Anti-Flag, who perhaps now have a fresher political relevance in the context of the current federal administration, and the late-1990s sing-along ska group who are surprisingly as popular as ever, Reel Big Fish. MIKE NIPPER
SATURDAY-SUNDAY
Surfer Blood with Sloucher
I worked in cafes for a long time, and if there were ever a sonic mascot for independent coffee places in the Northwest operated by mostly white college students, it would be an anthropomorphized copy of Surfer Blood’s debut album, Astro Coast (close second: Real Estate’s Days). Simultaneously catchy and soothing, succinct yet Coachella-level hazy, rock of this nature is so gently blinding, it could be what you play to animals before they’re slaughtered; it’s an altogether solid blend of everything good and bad about indie rock (that is to say, perfectly enjoyable without pushing any real barriers). Surfer Blood have staggered a bit with age and are touring in support of their most recent effort, Snowdonia, which I can say with confidence makes me feel like I suffered blunt force trauma to the head and woke up thinking we were back at the beginning of this decade. KIM SELLING
SUNDAY
Chastity Belt, French Vanilla, Strange Ranger
I can’t seem to get any of my friends interested in Chastity Belt, so we’re lucky the whole world minus my friends is already into Chastity Belt! Watch for a new album soon, although this new one came from a Portland studio and not a deconsecrated church with an amp in a confessional booth. French Vanilla are a Los Angeles quartet, two males and two females with a sax so flat it sounds like a trumpet, and no guitar some of the time, and a song about “Carrie” from Carrie that has monster-movie noises made by the singer. Off to a great start! Strange Ranger, three dudes, half-asleep indie-rock, occasional organ. Give us more organ! ANDREW HAMLIN
The Music of Arvo Pärt: Adagio
The music of composer Arvo Pärt creeps and leaps and slides and glides, but it’s not the Blob and not even the theme song from The Blob. It’s chill music and often sparsely beautiful, but it is not background music. It lifts and falls much like choral music, but it builds slower, finer, with more of a through line than the length of most hymns permit. This trio presentation of several Pärt pieces features Brooks Tran on piano, violinist Luke Fitzpatrick, and cellist Rose Bellini. You are invited to close your eyes. ANDREW HAMLIN
Steve 'N' Seagulls with Guests
Steve ’N’ Seagulls are more than just a cover band. This Finnish bluegrass group makes classic hard-rock and metal anthems their own by completely reimagining everything from Dio’s hit “Holy Diver” to “Nothing Else Matters” and “Seek and Destroy” by Metallica, complete with balalaika, mandolin, accordion, and, of course, a handful of bitchin’ banjo solos. Their unique slant on metal brought them worldwide attention starting in 2014, as they became a viral sensation via YouTube. Steve ’N’ Seagulls’ cover of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” earned more than 30 million views. At first you might laugh, but—all novelty value aside—they seriously shred a mean bluegrass Maiden cover. KEVIN DIERS Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app—available now on the App Store and Google Play.