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EMA, aka Erika Anderson of defunct psych-folk outfit Gowns, is all about contradictions. She's lo-fi and blown-out, folk-minded but tentatively danceable, ethereal and explosively percussive. The reductive way to describe her music would be to say that it's experimental, but, well, dammit everything's experimental now. The advent of the Internet
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For fans of Bruce Springsteen, the Replacements and the Pogues, their latter-day answer to those icons came in 2010 in the form of Titus Andronicus' epic, messy, passionate, over-the-top masterpiece, The Monitor. Similarly, fans of the Smiths, Tears for Fears and the Church may find solace in Merchandise's similarly epic
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As a rule, I'm generally all for any puns involving "Monster Mash" singer Bobby "Boris" Pickett. Nailed it, Horace Pickett! As if its awesome name wasn't enough, the band actually does well at evoking the cheesy party vibe of "Monster Mash." Though the band claims that it often gets comparisons
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For weeks, now, I've been trying to shake the images of Ich Hunger from my brain. Made by local filmmaker Isaac Olsen, Ich Hunger is a German expressionist freakout concerning a "creature boy" who lives in the forests of Germany and eats people. Saturday, as if Ich Hunger wasn't visually
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There's a spot in my musical life that has been left dormant since the days of Bright Eyes and Death Cab For Cutie - these sensitive indie bands that constructed perfectly poppy songs that somehow managed to sum up how I felt as a lost, confused young man. I didn't
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Look, I'm going to level with you: Live performances are where it's at. This is the thing that I'm trying to persuade you to do. To see live shows. What sounds more fun to you: some chillwave band that will allow you to contact the douchiest and most reposed part
Music
I'll be the first to admit that the Tacoma music scene tends to work in waves, dipping down during certain lean periods, and overflowing with warmth and creativity during our fat periods. At this stage in Tacoma's continued march toward some vague future utopia of musical community, one entity that
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At the opening for the art installation, "It's Alright To Cry," there will be performances from three Olympia mainstays who have nothing but killed it for a long time: Broken Water, LAKE and Karl Blau. I can't impress upon you enough just what a powerhouse lineup this is. In particular,
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By the time "Amy," the lead-off track on Red Jacket Mine's latest album, reaches the totally over-the-top organ breakdown, I'm completely sold on whatever Red Jacket Mine is doing. That organ solo hearkens back to the ballsy pop-mindedness of old guards like Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. At
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Kill Rock Stars artists Boats hail from Canada (Winnipeg, to be exact), home of all things bright, bubbly and indie pop these days, and Boats are no exception. With its barrage of hook-laden, buzzing pop gems, and lead singer's helium-enriched lead vocals of Mat Klachefsky, comparisons to Passion Pit will
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Werebearcat! self-identifies as an "elixerous mating of rockpop rapswagger jazzxuberance." Are they joking? Well, yeah, and no. The band is as right on with its own description as I could be, but the thing is that, even still, Werebearcat! seems like it is always joking. Everything it does is so
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Bobble Tiki is your average American. Average in every way. Bobble Tiki has two parents. They’ve been together since the ’50s, and they hate each other. Bobble Tiki was blonde as a baby Tiki, but as he grew up his hair slowly changed to brown. Now it’s just sparse. Bobble Tiki liked
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The first song I heard by Unknown Relatives was called "New" - ironic, considering that it sounds like a dead ringer for song you'd find hidden in one of those Nuggets compilations of long-lost '60s garage gems. It's all bopping guitar and bouncy rhythms, with cute little stop-start dynamics that
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The Deep Wile make the kind of music that hits a sweet spot for me: that era in the late '70s when roots-y rock and humble pop were meeting up punk and DIY aesthetics, with the likes of Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe and Wreckless Eric, to name a few. There
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The cover of The Albert Square album, Scared of the Youth, Scared of What's Next!, depicts two robots: one happy, one angry. It's an evocatively nerdy image, and once those first power chords come bursting out of "Sensational Programming," it becomes clear that this will all be a very nerdy
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As a mission statement, you couldn't find one much clearer than "Cruel Summer," the lead-off track on the latest release by Black Marble. As if the title didn't do well enough to harken back to the early '80s, from the moment that stiff drum machine meets up with those pulsing,
Viva South Sound
There's a certain familiar moment when you're hanging out with very close friends, being giddy and silly, and there's a way that you make each other laugh that's so specific and so unique that it's hard to recreate anywhere else. For sure, it's hard to recreate in the setting of
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One of the joys of being engaged in the local music scene for the past few years - both as a writer and an enthusiastic fan - has been to watch the growth and success of the Night Beats. For the uninitiated, the Night Beats consists of Danny Lee Blackwell,
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There's a certain familiar moment when you're hanging out with very close friends, being giddy and silly, and there's a way that you make each other laugh that's so specific and so unique that it's hard to recreate anywhere else. For sure, it's hard to recreate in the setting of
