Duff McKagan is the founding bassist of Guns N' Roses and the leader of Seattle's Loaded. His column runs every Thursday on Reverb.

With all the hubbub about the access for the Port of Seattle aside (and thank you KING-5's Chris Daniels for the traffic report this week!), it really does seem possible that we here in Seattle may be getting an NBA team back here within the next five or so years. The Sonics! . . . MAN. That would be REAL sweet.

Investor Chris Hansen seems to be the real deal here, folks, and through all the excitement around the Sacramento Kings drama, Hansen has stayed rather cool, aloof, and nonplussed. He seems to be the right mixture of determination and smarts for what will certainly be a testy process.

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Jared Price

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band play Friday, June 1st, at Columbia City Theater.

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band
Prehistory EP
Dead Oceans

Post-rock blog darlings Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band recently returned to the stage after an extended hiatus (they hadn't performed since 2010). Now they've got a new EP coming out as well, and next Friday, they celebrate its release at Columbia City Theater. Those who remember the glory days of 2008-2009 will undoubtedly be excited for their return, albeit in a slightly toned-down form. "Warm Bodies," the EP's single, is a somber, acoustic ballad that explores the pain of human existence, while opener "Best Bet" shows the spark and swagger that made their first album so compelling. "The Day" exhibits an almost dub sensibility in its pumped-up bassline. Singer Benjamin Verdoes' versatile vocal performance, at times ragged, at times sensitive and sad, completes the hypnotic overall effect.

Read on for a taste of Prehistory, and an explanation of why their second album got such a bad rap.

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Jen Sbragia and Rose Melberg are The Softies

Indie pop duo the Softies are undoubtedly one of my favorite Northwest artists of all time, and so it's inevitable that I'm beyond excited to get the chance to see them perform their beautiful harmonies and intricate guitar melodies for the first time Saturday at Folklife. Made up of Rose Melberg (also of the awesome Tiger Trap and Go Sailor) and Jen Sbragia (All Girl Summer Fun Band), the Softies were active from 1994-2000, releasing four albums of love songs on K Records that sound as fresh today as when they came out.

As the K site notes, this will be the first Northwest appearance by the Softies in many years. "They have lay dormant since the release of their Holiday in Rhode Island album, as Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia have been busy with their other musical pursuits: Rose her solo album Homemade Ship and Jen the All Girl Summer Fun Band." You can read an interview with Rose Melberg discussing the reunion at the K Records website.

Not to sound huckster-y, but if you're a friend of indie pop, you'd be a fool to miss this rare chance to see them.

Listen to one of my favorite Softies song, "Sleep Away Your Troubles," after the jump, and catch them at the K Records showcase on Saturday, May 26th, at 2:50 p.m. at the Center Stage.

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Today brings the official announcement of the the first half of Decibel Festival's 2012 line-up, following yesterday's unauthorized and disavowed leak. Sharp readers will note several similarities between the two, although today's official announcement leaves a lot of slots, including one headlining artist, unaccounted for. One might speculate that those question marks will be filled in with names floated yesterday, but officially that remains to be seen. In the meantime, plenty to chew on in today's announcement. Some highlights: Carl Craig, John Talabot, Fennesz, Matthew Dear, Actress, Dixon. (I remain entirely unpleased about Kimbra and Ariel Pink.)

Oh, and this is cute: This year on their website, you can count down to the festival--happening September 26th - 30th--in beats per minute. At a tasteful 120 BPM, it's 26,716,080 beats to go as of this moment.

The press release from Decibel after the jump.

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Nice Hits! is a Reverb column that unironically dissects, reviews, and appreciates the best songs of the current Top 40. It is unsnobbishly premised on the logic that just because a lot of the music on the radio is crap doesn't mean all the music on the radio is crap.

The hit: "Want U Back," Cher Lloyd, off Sticks + Stones.

Current chart position: #66 on iTunes, uncharted on Billboard.

The team: "Want U Back," the third single off of Lloyd's debut album Sticks + Stones, was written by Shellback and Savan Kotecha, both of whom worked on the last Cher Lloyd hit I wrote about back in October, "With Ur Love." Since then, Kotecha's added a number of hits to his resume, including One Direction's "One Thing" and "What Makes You Beautiful" and Usher's "Scream." He's also written a Justin Bieber/Nicki Minaj collaboration called "Beauty and a Beat" that will appear on Bieber's forthcoming Believe album. Shellback, who also produced "Want U Back," recently repeated his successful Maroon 5 collaboration--he wrote and produced "Moves Like Jagger"--with "Payphone," which has been charting in iTunes' Top 10 since it was released in April.

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Seattle electronic music and arts festival Decibel may have just blown a bit of it's 2012 roll-out strategy today, when an initial line-up went live on their site and started making the social network rounds before being promptly taken down moments ago. It's not on their site now, but screen-shots never die. The big news: ORBITAL!!! The pioneering UK electronic duo have made an incredibly strong comeback with this year's new album Wonky (their first since 2004), and their live sets are the stuff of legend. (Check out this video of them playing live at the BBC recently for a bit of an idea, only with a polite studio audience.)

The other big get is mysterious Barcelona producer John Talabot, whose excellent album of slow-mo disco, moody techno, and spooked-out house, ƒIN, is one of the year's best so far. Also check out his A+ mix for FACT Magazine.

Plenty of time to talk about this before the official roll-out, let alone the festival, but briefly, let me be the first to say: Ariel Pink and Kimbra are totally wack, wildly inappropriate indie grabs. More PLUR, less KEXP, imo.

UPDATE: Just off the phone with the fine people at Decibel, who say that this leaked image "was a place-holder we had on our website that doesn't accurately reflect the line-up we'll be announcing tomorrow at 8am. It is not a preliminary line-up." So: No Orbital? No Ariel? Won't somebody think of the PLUR vibes?!

Long story short: You can speculate in the meantime, but tune in tomorrow at 8am for the official Decibel 2012 line-up announcement.

We here at Seattle Weekly HQ just fielded a phone call from someone now known around the office as the "crying grandma" and after a little fun, it's time to come clean. Lionel Richie, contrary to what was previously reported, will not be performing at the Shanty Tavern this Friday. In his review of Richie's new release Tuskegee, Mike Seely also reported that the singer "just added the Wedgwood Broiler to his burgeoning restaurant empire," which is also untrue. But if you still carry a torch to see Richie perform "All Night Long" live, you might be able to hit up this guy to do some marketing for you.

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It may or may not surprise you to learn we Seattle Weekly writers occasionally take other gigs. I recently had the pleasure of cheating on the Weekly with SIFF, previewing flicks for their festival guide.

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Girls and boys, get your panties ready for throwing on stage--Justin Bieber's just announced his 2012 North American tour dates, and Washington's on the itinerary. The Biebs will perform at the Tacoma Dome on Tuesday, October 9. Tickets for the concert go on sale next Saturday, June 2; prices range from $39.50 to $89.50. The Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen, who currently has the #1 song in the country, will open.

The last time the Biebs was in town, it was 2010, he still had swoopy hair, his voice hadn't cracked yet, and Duff McKagan gave in to the Bieber Fever. Two years later, Bieber is totally a man, as evidenced by the above photo.

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crappy cell phone pic by me

Best Cost
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The Neptune Theatre

Going into last night's Best Coast show, I was thinking how hard it must be for a hyped artist to be touring behind a sophomore album that most everyone agrees is a brick. How do you balance playing the new songs with playing the old ones that the crowd wants to hear? Best Coast balanced their set list by playing 24 songs--which is, like, all of them, but which also only takes an hour because every song is only 2:30 minutes long. And if Bethany Cosentino and band were bothered by the largely lukewarm response to the (admittedly pretty weak) Jon Brion-produced The Only Place, they didn't show it last night. They were friendly and enthusiastic, cracking jokes and praising the Seattle crowd, which was pretty goddamn excited about Best Coast in return.

Cosentino not only praised the Seattle crowd, for its enthusiasm and for its crowd-surfing ("we don't get those"), she told them how much more fun we were than Portland, who she imitated by crossing her arms and standing still, pouting. (Huge cheers here.) Bruno spoke up to share the sentiment--"you guys are like the sweetest crowd ever"--and Cosentino teased that he, like, never talks. Later, she asked if they'd be selling cream cheese dogs out front, because Bruno would eat like 14 of them. Making fun of Portland? Seattle dogs? This was no "Hello, Shelbyville" schtick, these guys had done their research. Hats off.

Between the banter, though, there were the songs.

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