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Showing posts with label Kraken. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kraken. Show all posts
Friday, November 15, 2013
7 Year Old Blind Girl
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7 Year Old Blind Girl on Facebook
Monday, July 8, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Never give up
That's the kind of show that takes real guts. It's exhilarating.
We played a show once where we were supposed to follow a band that fed sequenced music from a laptop into the PA. They spent 45 minutes trying to get sound out of that laptop... there was almost an hour of dead air between bands... and we offered to go on, because people were walking out of the club. When they finally got the laptop sound sorted, it turned out to be some accents and a double of the lead vocal.
Just an aside: This
is the same controversy that's hanging over the Beyonce performance
at the inauguration: singing over/along with a previously recorded
version of yourself.
That
band's singer would not step on stage if pre-recorded vocal tracks
weren't being fed through the PA. The rest of the band, for the
record, was game-- they would just plug in and play-- but the singer
wasn't going to go on without backing tracks.Anyway, that singer wouldn't do it. And so we went on.
Compare this with the Buckbye show I just saw: they went on minus one member, without amplifiers, and killed it. They went on stage to play a badass show against impossible odds and pulled it off.
Their bassist, Dan (from 7 Year Old Blind Girl), wasn't there-- a missing member is rough for any band to deal with. Beyond that, their van broke down, so the guitar gear wasn't there. Karly played through a Boss distortion pedal, straight into the mains... and had to borrow the cable to get from point A to point B. Buckbye played like nothing was wrong.
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| Buckbye (the whole band... I didn't have a camera at The Kraken with missing members and equipment) |
For me, that puts things into perspective: anyone would want to curl up and hide in that kind of situation, but I'd like to think I would see it through. Just like Buckbye. The show must go on.
I can't imagine Karly refusing to go on because her per-recorded backing tracks weren't ready, and that's already science fiction: she'd never pre-record her vocals. But still: nearly everything that could impede Buckbye, did. And they played, regardless.
By my measure, all the the oddities within a show going wrong (or possibly going wrong, or kinda sorta going wrong) are part of the human element that make shows exciting, unexpected variables that make the show you expected into something unexpected. The kind of show you brag about having seen...
Compare that to a band who won't go on because there's a weird hum in the guitar amp, cancels, and everyone goes home early.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Nasalrod
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Nasalrod is drums, bass, guitar, and vocals, and the members it shares with Lickity (Justin on guitar, Tim on drums) do not bring Lickity's mission statement with them-- Nasalrod have no synths, the beats aren't influenced by drum 'n bass, and they are entirely their own animal: Chairman (vocals) and Kat (bass) are the band's founding members. The group defies easy description, but they definitely have some of the characteristics of the post-hardcore movement (driving energy, hard corners, athletic changes), as well as some noise rock, some straight up punk, and even some propulsive dance energy... some or all of which can be thrown into the mix in any Nasalrod song, at any time. This band does not believe in boring; their set was dynamic, energetic, and always engaging.
I know a guy who's contended, on more than one occasion, "Singers ruin bands," his complaint being that a group of talented players putting together good music can be undercut by putting their limited-range, poor-note-choosing, charismaless buddy on a microphone; I see that kind of thing often enough to usually agree to the complaint... and then there's Jeffrey "Chairman" Couch, who can seemingly channel David Yow or Dave Brockie or Jello Biafra at any given time, often in the span of one breath, while jumping off the bannister by the Kraken doorway and stomping around like a madman. The vocal pivots and changes in direction in Nasalrod are as mad and varied as the instrumental ones: not only can he carry a tune (rare enough at any show), but he can front a song with a variety of voices, characters, and styles, transforming from sharp, staccato bursts to swooping notes to holding a melody as the song evolves from one part to the next. Chairman's irrepressible stage show might even win over showgoers less receptive to some of Nasalrod's weirder charms.
I'd recommend them to just about anyone. If Nasalrod's coming to a club near you: go.
Nasalrod on Facebook
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Andrew WKoverband
Who knows if something like this will ever happen again. There was a palpable sense of fun in the room-- the crowd was nuts, everyone was singing along, people were bouncing off the walls.
If I had to power to make a better looking, better sounding video, I absolutely would; this is what I was able to get.
The Kraken
the faces behind the bar and at the door haven't changed... but the people we saw at The Galway now own The Kraken, which is a big change in some ways, but most of the bands' (and patrons') experience will remain the same.There's a change in the tap list-- The Kraken is not attempting to be an Irish pub-- and they've expanded the role of the kitchen, but the real change is that no one can take this bar away from the people who love it... it is now theirs.
The Kraken on Facebook
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Phalgeron
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Phalgeron have deep roots in the post-British Invasion, Power Metal genres, but aren't constrained by them-- for anyone not interested in vocals that wail or ramp up to a flamboyant falsetto, that may be their greatest strength. They can march out covers of Mercyful Fate (with growls and roars replacing King Diamond's trademark shrieks) and Suffocation with equal panache, both made more impressive for Phalgeron being a guitar/bass/drum power trio.
My night with them at the Galway was not my first time with them-- I've known this band since they were called Phlagathon, I've seen them a number of times, got a ride home with them from a too-long-to-walk-home-from show in the south of Seattle, played with them at Beer Metal Summer Camp.... I've known this band for a while, and I've always liked them.
So I don't want this review to fall on deaf ears just because I was a bit out of m'self. I've dug this band since well before I started this blog.
That said, my Phalgeron eureka moment occurred maybe six hours after ubik.frontwoman Michelle and I got slightly out-of-our-heads (some substances stay potent, wrapped in foil in a ziplock bag in my fridge, for five years. Who knew?) We did enjoy our time in odd places before the show, but it's fair to say we both breathed a sigh of relief when we took our seats at the Galway: safe haven. Home base.
Watching good, national bands (Phalgeron was the only local band of the night) tune up on a small stage at a local bar was a bit of a godsend to me at the moment: I've been in Seattle long enough that I'm not sure I ever appreciated how far removed I am from my 16-year-old self, someone who listened to tapes of obscure bands I never thought I'd see live. Shows like this are a candyland my teenage self never dreamed of, but they've become a normal part of my everyday life.
Just sayin'... this is good fortune.
Though the bill featured a good band from Utah and a cheesily flamboyant band from L.A. (a contest between the two guitarists determining who was the better wanky lead player? Seriously?), Phalgeron were the highlight of the night. Again, this isn't preferential treatment to a local band, because I truly had an epiphany with them that night: I'd always liked them, but I'm still kicking myself... I ought to have loved them well before this specific night.
Phalgeron are almost perfectly my kind of metal. They're technical and articulate, but not cheesy or overly flamboyant about it. They mine heavy, heavy grooves, too, and have a tight, true-to-death metal moshability. Finally, they're metal as metal can be, but their stage presence plays massive pronouncements and edicts delivered from God-On-Stage as profoundly silly... which is to say, Phalgeron are fun to see, a million miles removed from the pompous asses that can pop up on metal stages. Phalgeron aren't just better than the egotists that populated the Candlemass stage, they're the antidote to it.
That kind of fun-and-loose personality only boosts the stunning gestalt of the music. Guitarist Tyler and bassist Lane have a kind of Jeff Walker/Bill Steer interplay on their dual vocals, and Lane will often hold down the groove while Tyler's guitar hits the British Invasion/power metal technical top end. The songs will evolve and change, find different riffs, different grooves... interact, react, and play off one another... the highlights of what intelligent metal riffing is capable of.
This doesn't even mention how Michelle and I spent our night: watching Ian, Phalgeron's drummer. The drums in Phalgeron don't have any limits: Ian blends easily from the hardcore influenced drumming of early thrash to the double-kick drumming that dominated the Slayer era of metal to modern blast beats. Big, rolling fills come in where the songs peak and hit their harder corners, but, like the rest of Phalgeron, the drums are exactly as flashy as they need to be... the fills and rolls fit the songs and work within the songs themselves. The drumming is massive, technical, and executed with exactly as much panache as fits the songs... but isn't a show-off session. Everything is dexterous; nothing is in excess.
All things considered, I consider Phalgeron one of the absolute best metal bands in Seattle-- I haven't reviewed any of their contemporaries (yet), but I see them as Top 5 (probably Top 3... I can only think of two other metal bands in Seattle I like nearly as much as them), and I tend not to mention bands I can't link to.
By my measure this is a world-class metal band, exactly the kind of group I used to listen to obsessively before I moved to a city where I could see Phalgeron every other month or so. I am lucky to have them, and so is Seattle... and if you're not in the Pacific Northwest, then buying their record puts you in the shoes I was in when I was listening to Carcass tapes all those years ago.
Phalgeron on Facebook
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
7 Year Old Blind Girl
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7 Year Old Blind Girl complicates matters by not fitting themselves into any of punk's well-populated subdivisions... If I have to compare them to someone, I usually pick older, Andy Kerr-era NoMeansNo, mostly because they both have a tendency to veer off in an unexpected direction within a song (I can imagine them covering "Dead Bob" or something like that from the NMN catalog.) There can be some sharp corners in a Blind Girl song, hard turns and abrupt edges.
My friends and I tend to spend a Blind Girl show wide eyed, nudging each other for each “can you believe they just did that?” moment... and there are a lot of them. One song can easily be fast and slow, bright and sludgy-- 7 Year Old Blind Girl might have a slow heavy riff slam into a bright, bouncy, up-stroke rhythm, but they're just as likely to change between the two in the middle of a bar, halfway through the third line in the verse.
These songs aren't technical exercises, either-- the flow of the songs, the flow of the show, is not designed to confuse or lose the audience. Changes in tempo and compound time signatures join together dramatically, with big crescendos and heart-stopping pauses. There's familiar territory where they let you find your feet, and fans of traditional, rapid-fire punk rock will find plenty to love at these shows... but expect the unexpected, because a part will never sit still for too long. 7 Year Old Blind Girl seems to operate in the anti-boredom zone, letting a riff or break go as long as it needs to, but the changes take the legs out from under anyone who might complain that punk rock might be predictable or formulaic.
From the audience, Blind Girl shows are equal parts high energy, intense, and fun. There's a playful presence coming from the stage, and for band that can get crushingly heavy or breakneck furious in the song, this obviously isn't a band that takes itself too seriously... they have no problem with stage banter, jokes, or interacting with the audience.
Without fail, these are fun, engaging shows: they're tons of fun for the uninitiated, they're fast enough (and punk enough-- no matter how you define "punk") that the punk crowd will love them, they drop into the kind of heavy grooves that will win metalheads over, and they're intricate enough to win the favor of prog fans. I'm not saying 7 Year Old Blind Girl is all things to all people... they'll surely alienate the beard/glasses/sweaters crowd looking for acoustic guitars, pop hooks, and mooney eyed verses about their deep, deep feelings (for example)... but a Blind Girl show is a riot for anyone who wants a band that will blow their hair back. The added bonus is that you'll have a great show regardless of whether your brain is switched off or on.
Personally, I recommend On.
7 Year Old Blind Girl on MySpace
photos by Tyler Griffith
photos by Tyler Griffith
The Galway Arms
unstable for dollar beers ($4 pitchers). Their recent remodel has improved their PA and the flow of traffic through the bar on busy show nights, but the vibe in the place remains friendly and low-key.The Galway lives at the top of University Way, up by Ravenna-- if you're familiar with the University District (or avoid the U-Dist because of sports bars, frat boys, and kids who've just turned 21), the Galway is far enough north of the distasteful facets of U life for those things not to be a problem. The Galway is an even keel punk bar that doesn't suffer fools lightly... them looking for fights are quickly ejected (and quietly, too. I've never seen a punch thrown in there.) I don't want to make it sound like an exclusive club, either-- going in on a non show night, you're as likely to hear bluegrass or Ween as punk on the sound system.
Personally, I usually go on show nights, and the Galway tends to be pretty punk and/or metal with their live shows, though that's also not an exclusive thing-- you'll still find variety here if you check their listings. The stage is fairly small and the PA is run off a mixing board behind the band, so you'll be setting your levels yourself, but the intimacy of the club (and overall enthusiasm of a Galway crowd) make it one of the most fun places in Seattle to play.
The Galway Arms is also one of the few clubs I've seen bring in walk-in traffic during shows. I always thought that kind of behavior would be more prevalent, but lots of people walk in off the street, put down their $5, and wander into a Galway show even though they have no idea who's playing... and it's not the same people from show to show. That's pretty damn cool.
The Galway Arms is now The Kraken
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