Past Lives - Tapestry of Webs (2010)

 

Growing up in a small city with limited resources for bands, one that was never included on anyone's tour schedule, was frustrating for a young me. Situated firmly between NYC and Philadelphia, you'd think that teenage me would have many options. 

Life wasn't like that, however.

Fast forward to my first experience living in a bigger city. My desire for live music was so pent up that every year I would bankrupt myself seeing live music. It was like a drug. I would get yearly bonuses that would all be dwindled 4 months, where I'd inevitably pull money from my retirement fund to cover rent. 

One of the bands I saw in this time was Past Lives. I was working with the bassist from The Thermals, who were opening, so I had the rare opportunity to see a show for free, and I loved The Thermals so win win. Then Past Lives takes the stage and within minutes my little mind was splattered all over the walls of the venue. 

Past Lives featured Jordan Blilie on vocals... a very recognizable voice in the music scene of the Pacific Northwest. I'd loved his earlier band The Blood Brothers, but didn't really follow Blilie's career or even know what he looked like. So immediately when he started singing I knew he was standing right in front of me. 

Tapestry of Webs is post-hardcore pushed up toward colorful melodicism and away from the dismal, grey vibes more indicative of the genre. The music is energetic and thrashing at times but also swings towards balladry. There's singing AND screaming. Guitars AND saxophone and... is that a clarinet or a bassoon in there? A wild, beautiful, inspired record that 13 years later is still giving newness to my ears. 

Past Lives - Tapestry of Webs

Truly - Fast Stories... from Kid Coma (1995)

 

 A lot of people have strong opinions about the word "grunge". It's divisive because its one of the few music genres that doesn't have have definable sound. Pearl Jam and Tad are about as different as Jimi Hendrix and Judas Priest, but they both receive the label "grunge". 

The progenitors of the genre are nearly all from Washington state, and in fact grunge was also referred to as "The Seattle Sound", but if one uses that as a metric then both L7 and Stone Temple Pilots don't get included, which would upset many to the point of pitchforks and torches. Another interesting thing about the genre, if that's what we're calling it, is that none of the people credited with it wanted any ownership of the word. Punk bands proudly call themselves such. Not the case with grunge.

Whether they liked the term or not, Truly was a band from Seattle that no one in their right mind would debate calling grunge. For starters, the rhythm section features founding members of both Soundgarden (Hiro Yamamoto) and The Screaming Trees (Mark Pickerel), 2 of grunge's biggest bands. 

Frontman Robert Roth, the least known member, was actually very well known in Seattle's grunge community of the early 1990s. He was considered to join Nirvana when the band began seeking a second guitarist. Roth's voice actually brings to min
d Kurt Cobain during his most somber moments, and the nasal screeching of Mark Arm from Mudhoney when he screams. His guitar sound is incredibly dense and distorted but without sacrificing melody. Where Truly TRULY stands out is their incorporation of 60's sounds and song styles. "If You Don't Let It Die" almost sounds like The Kinks if they'd been a strung-out Seattle band in the 90s. A Rhodes piano featured on "Angelhead" lends a Doors-esque quality to the song's stoned feeling, not to leave out the use of a mellotron in the song's chorus, harkening to "Strawberry Fields Forever" (Roth would later earn mellotron credits on Built To Spill's Perfect From Now On).

Make no mistake however. While the songs on "Fast Stories... from Kid Coma" all have a psychedelic 60's vibe, the bulk of the sound is firmly rooted in punchy distorted rock music more akin to plaid shirts than paisley bellbottoms. This was producer Adam Kasper's first produced record... his other credits include heavier bands like Soundgarden and Queens of the Stone Age... and he would later go on to winning a grammy for Foo Fighters "There Is Nothing Else to Lose".

This album has been described as grunge music's lost masterpiece. It has also been called grunge's swan song. While it was released to critical acclaim, it seems like it should have been bigger. That said it is almost too weird for what MTV was selling at the time: the tides were shifting away from grunge and toward pop punk and grunge-lite bands like Silverchair. Truly was too dark and heavy for a world still hurting from the death of Kurt Cobain. But in retrospect, this album deserves to be listened to and talked about by those still interested in whatever grunge is (or was). It is a fantastic sounding record that feels like the 1990s. They say the 1990s are back... which is maybe true but you never hear bands like Truly anymore.

Truly - Fast Stories... from Kid Coma

Ubu Roi – Nice Dude EP (2013)

I just returned from Seattle, and those chowder eaters are doing something right. The record stores were full of folks and the shows I attended had a mix of music types present. I am fine with just a few days of sunlight a year, but I guess that would be detrimental to the living.

Anyone who has listened to my band’s music (and we just put out a new record by the way), knows that I have a thing for fast, punchy rock songs. Especially when the lyrics are about drinking booze. Ubo Roi do both of these things in spades. They also happen to be far more competent players than we are, even though I assume they are also soaked in booze while the tape is rolling. Just check out the first track’s lyrics:

“I don’t wanna eat no cheeseburgers, French fries
I wanna drink some alcohol
I don’t wanna eat no pizza pie
I wanna drink some alcohol”

Buy the 7 inch, so these kids can have some beer money.

Get it here:Ubu Roi – Nice Dude EP (2013)

Piano Piano – When I was not in myself, no one alarmed me (2013)

I once had to dispose of a body. It was far more difficult than they make it look on television. Other than the weight of the body, the amount of stuff that flows out of a corpse really makes a clean desecration a difficult task. As the crime I was committing was intended to remain secret, I definitely was not rocking any tunes while getting rid of this little problem either. Now that I think of it, this was 1896, so no portable, recorded music existed to begin with. Damn.

But if I did have a soundtrack, Seattle’s Piano Piano would have made a fine one. Highly technical, intricate math rock that builds to those beautiful crescendos that best reflect the moment your ax bludgeons another stoolie individual. This 4 track EP has some strong tracks, but the last track titled “Harmonics” is a standout for all potential cult leaders and serial murders… and I guess you could enjoy it if you did not fall into either of those categories.

Get it here:

Piano Piano – When I was not in myself, no one alarmed me (2013)

Wimps - Demo (2012)

I've been working at a place run by people who were a part of the Olympia music scene when it was in it's prime. Subsequently, much of the music played at work is music from K Records, as well as other Olympia label, Kill Rock Stars(a lot of nostalgia in these guys). Beat Happening, Karp, Bikini Kill, Heaven's To Betsy, godheadSilo… the list goes on… I'd say that over the past 6 years I've had this job, when I'm not being tortured with 50 Cent or The Carpenters, that I've listened to, mostly, music from Olympia or the Pacific Northwest in general.

Which is why it's hard to not put Seattle punk rock 3-piece, Wimps, into that context. Their music harkens a little to California skate punk of the 80's, but mostly to Olympia's riot grrrl/punk scene of the 90's. I hear a lot of The Frumpies in what the Wimps do, and a lot of it has to do with Rachel Ratner's vocal delivery, which is reminiscent of both Tobi Vail (Bikini Kill/Frumpies) and Selene Vigil (7 Year Bitch). Their music also brings to mind Carrie Brownstein's pre-Sleater-Kinney band, Excuse 17. 

While Wimps have that sound, it doesn't mean that it's derivative. I think a lot of that early Olympia stuff doesn't hold up very well over time, the youthfulness of it exposing it's own naivety. What the Wimps do sounds like it's coming from a place that's much more sure of itself. All 5 songs on their demo are good, solid songs, and I can't wait to see them when they open for The Mallard in a couple weeks. 


Wimps - Demo 

White Coward - Relaxer (2012)

Everyone has their own opinions on what music is and isn't. I remember going to school with metal kids (collectively labeled "the headbangers") who'd refuse to call hip hop music. Others balance their opinions on the fulcrum between "pretty" and "ugly". There are those, for example, who fill their music collection exclusively with the likes of The Beach Boys or Sufjan Stevens, while others focus primarily on bands with names like Cannibal Corpse or Vomiting Rectum.

But, in the end, it's all music, as whatever anything "is" lies in the eye of the beholder.

White Coward is a Seattle 3-piece whose music expertly evokes the emotion of trepidation, traversing those dissonant grounds between post-hardcore and noise. There's nothing that shimmers or jangles here, unless you'd consider guitars that rattle and clank like curtains of knives in a windstorm. The vocalist wails with both urgency and desperation... a great voice that adds to the overall tension of Relaxer. The drums are heavy but have a pace that runs the gamut from slow and driving to the alarming intensity of an over-adrenalized heartbeat.

White Coward snarl like an abandoned factory that whirs, buzzes and grinds despite years of rust and decay. Even though I'm a complete whore for strong melodies and harmonies, I can't deny the appeal of this music. Along with the recently defunct Wet Paint DMM, and the amazing post-Blood Brothers group Past Lives, I'm beginning to see Seattle's Bedlam-scene on par with the best output of midwest record labels like Touch And Go, Amphetamine Reptile, and Skin Graft.

6 songs, pay what you will.

White Coward - Relaxer

WET PAINT DMM - DMM (2009)

Wet Paint DMM are a now defunct Seattle 3-piece who are too good to not share with you, though I'm having difficulty describing their sound in a non-convoluted way. I keep wanting to say "deconstructionist post-punk performance art" but then I immediately want to punch myself in the mouth.

Their sound is minimal - one drummer, one guitarist, and one singer - but what they achieve is quite dynamic.

The drums provide a brutal, dark and tribal canvas over which the guitarist paints strange and dissonant colors. At times, like on "IT IS THERAPEUTIC"  and "LION TAMER", the guitar sounds like it's being played through circuit-bent effects processors. The most striking element of Wet Paint, however, is their powerful vocalist. Her dramatic delivery is just that: part poetry, part performance. At times she sings, but mostly it's a very animated and urgent one-sided conversation that sometimes devolves into moaning or animal noises ... like she's either having an orgasm or killing someone. Maybe she's doing both. Her contribution alone would put Wet Paint's non-existant record into the "Kabuki theater performed in an insane asylum" section of the record store.

Long and short of it is... Wet Paint's sound is dichotomous and treads lines between art and rock; sex and nightmares; blood/soil and extraterrestrial mechanics. It's intellectual meets visceral, the line between which lies the heart. It's postmodern, I suppose, but without pretension because what they achieve is very authentic and full of heart.

This is aortic music ...bubbling up from a prehistoric stew.

Wet Paint DMM - DMM