Wilco played at the Paramount with White Denim on Tuesday, February 7, 2012. Photo by Laura Musselman.

Through most of the early 1980's, Fernando Valenzuela was a force of nature, as well as a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He had an unusually chaotic wind-up, involving his eyes rolling up toward the heavens just before releasing a pitch. Valenzuela claimed that, during this particular part of his wind-up, he was actually breathing through his eyelids, much like the fabled lava lizards of the Galapagos Islands. While the band that showed up at the Paramount on Tuesday night weren't claiming to breathe through their eyelids (although their wind-up is often equally as unique), they were doing their best from the first note to get the audience to breathe through their ears.

Oh, believe me. I know it sounds like a bunch of hyperbolic hooey. This was my 12th time to see Wilco (starting with a particular raucous, deli-tray tossing show during the Being There days), and I had an entire diatribe all sketched up in my brain about how we've seen Wilco's finest days pass, how Jeff Tweedy only writes two types of songs anymore (children's sing-alongs or meandering 9 minute long, 2-note sonic explorations that never have any thoughtful progression of them), how predictably middle-of-the-road "Dad rock" the band has become at times.

Shawn Brackbill

Much of the crowd gathered in the Vera Project last night to watch Lemolo inexplicably cleared out right after the local duo played their opening set, which is a shame, because they missed a couple of worlds-more-interesting sets from the two touring bands from New York who topped the bill. The last time I saw Twin Sister was in October of 2010; they stole the show that night, but the year-plus that's since passed has turned them into an even sharper live band. (Which isn't much of a surprise, as they spent much of 2011 on the road in support of their debut full-length, In Heaven).

Andrea Estrella, who is tiny, looks like a living doll, and appeared last night in a plaid shirt and cloudy white hair teased out like an electrocution victim, has developed into an onstage natural. The ending of the band's single "Bad Street," where Estrella chants over a squiggly synth ("Bad house/Bad street/Big hands/Big feet...") was one of my favorite grooves of 2011; the song translates even better live, where it can meander freely and the beat can thrum throughout the entire room. Like most of Twin Sister's songs, "Bad Street" is equal parts interesting instrumentation combined with Estrella's cool and collected vocals.

This is a band that inspires a mosh pit.

You could hardly ask for a better night to see Los Campesinos! than the literal eve of Superbowl Sunday and the figurative eve of St. Valentine's Day. And not just because their song "You! Me! Dancing!" appeared in a Budweiser ad that ran every 12 minutes during last year's Superbowl. Football* and romance--winning, and (more often) losing at both--are prime concerns of the Welsh indie pop sextet. They have a song sort of about the England national football team ("Every Defeat a Divorce"), which as I understand it is essentially like Bon Iver writing a song about the Green Bay Packers, were they a consistently losing squad, and their catalogue is littered with football references. This is their healthy pastime, but the crushing futility of life, romance, and everything else is their larger obsession.

They make the morbid and morose go down easy, though, via frontman Gareth's sharp gallows humor and the band's boisterous pile-ons of guitars, glockenspiel, keys, and the kitchen sink. Also: Los Campesinos! may be a twee indie pop band, but they have the rowdiest mosh pit this side of Fucked Up at last year's Capitol Hill Block Party. You know, there's dancing!

Nada Surf played at the Tractor Tavern on Thursday, February 2, 2012. Photo by Laura Musselman.

In case you were wondering, those nasty, swirling rumors are totally true; every pop song in the history of the universe has already been written. There are only so many strings and frets on a guitar, and after thousands of years of noodling, we've finally hit that point where no one can put two things together that haven't ever been heard together somewhere before. That said, there are bands that do it in a completely average way and then there are bands like Nada Surf who serve as textbook examples of the simple beauty and overpowering majesty of well-written/arranged three chord pop songs.

After years of touring as a solid-enough trio, the band has finally adopted a second guitarist (Cleveland's finest, Doug Gillard, formerly of Cobra Verde and Guided By Voices, amongst others). Over the course of the almost 90 minute show, Gillard's presence helped the band propel above singer Matthew Caws' capable strumming and into the more bombastic territory that Nada Surf songs aspire toward on album.

NOFX are famous for a lot of things, and though their humor, politics and independence may spring to mind first, their penchant for partying is also legendary. Over the course of their nearly 30 years together, the band has become world class at playing gigs fucked up. This, of course, is no great revelation in the world of rock & roll, but for a band who play as fast and as furious as NOFX does, they really shouldn't pull it off as well as they do, gig after gig, year after year, decade after decade.

Since the snow first fell on Monday, the only thing I've left the six block radius of my neighborhood for was to go to a show (Tuesday night's Wolves in the Throne Room concert). Otherwise, we've got everything we need right here, and our house even happens to sit on top of a wicked sledding hill. The last couple days, though, the snow was enough that shows were getting cancelled left and right, and as long snow days creep into night, cabin fever starts setting in. Seattle electronic musician Vox Mod (aka Scott Porter) was set to play Portland's Holocene last night, but found himself also snowed in. He decided to do the show anyway, remotely, via streaming his set to ustream and having the guys down at Holocene run him into the sound system and project him onto the wall. I didn't even have to leave the couch.

One reason non-metal dudes might like Olympia black metal trio Wolves in the Throne Room is because they give them something to talk (/write) about besides the music. The band's whole project of taking Cascadian Earth First deep ecology and imbuing it with the heft of Norse myth is conceptual catnip to a writer--add to that the band's actual semi-agrarian lifestyles, and the surging popularity of North American Black Metal set against the violence, racism, and overall intrigue of the original Norwegian stuff, and you've got stories that practically write themselves. Me, I had my review of this show all planned out as early as Monday: snowmageddon as potent reminder of nature's power over civilization vis a vis the ideology of Wolves in the Throne Room. Only, as of last night, no one was quite sure if snowmageddon was really coming. There was a buzz of anticipation in the room, but not a fleck of snow on the streets. Not to worry, I had a backup bullshit review planned for just such an occasion: Waiting for a wintry Ragnarok that never comes as revealing the aspirational, essentially fantasy element of WITTR's doomy nature worship. See, this shit is easy!

Pictureplane

Pictureplane
Friday January 13th
Electric Tea Garden

The good news is that Olympia's minor '90s revival--with an emphasis in SST and Homestead Records--comes complete with righteous hair farming. Three out of four dudes in rising indie rock outfit Milk Music sport some serious matching long hair, suitable for gathering in a ponytail or hanging in front of the face like a curtain or whipping back and forth during a headbangingly good guitar solo. Maybe I'm going to the wrong shows, but it's been a while since I've seen such a phalanx of locks. That's the good news, the much better news is that Milk Music seriously fucking shred. Over a charged base propulsive drumming and fuzzy bass and guitar thrash, singer/guitarist Alex Coxon's guitar riffs squeal and bend and take off, the kind of leads that rightly elicited hollers from the audience and even the odd tongue-stuck-out guitar face from Coxon.

Craig Robinson and the Nasty Delicious played at the Neptune Theatre on Thursday, January 12th, 2012.

Splicing the worlds of comedy and music together is by no means a new idea; plenty of comedians have toured with an acoustic guitar or piano as a bit in their act, but few have taken it to the level of Craig Robinson. Robinson (who you may have seen in The Office or Hot Tub Time Machine, amongst others) has upped the ante, pushing his act farther away from traditional stand-up by bringing a seven piece band (the Chicago-based Nasty Delicious) with him for the entirety of the show.

As far as raw, natural singing talent and having the sort of voice that makes heads turn...well, that's not really Robinson's strong suit. That said, Craig Robinson is a tremendous talent and a natural entertainer. After giving his band some time to warmup and show off their respective chops a bit, Robinson came out like a burly, hibernating bear just waking up and gave a loving nod to Elvis' entrances to the funked out strains of the epic "Also Sprach Zarathustra", revealing a neon green Seahawks jersey at the crescendo. Through the next two hours, Robinson led the audience through a careening succession of rapid fire bits that showed off his scattershot comedy style. Starting out by turning "If You're Happy And You Know It" into an over the top sex jam, Robinson immediately jumped into lovingly mocking R&B styles, eventually getting all of men in the audience to whisper-sing "take your panties off" (making the somewhat convincing argument that every song should have a "take your panties off" subliminally thrown in the mix).

Stephanie

We can take it as given that the most interesting music being made at any given time or place isn't always the most popular. (In the same way that McDonalds serving billions and billions doesn't make theirs the best burgers, record sales or sold-out shows alone don't make, say, these guys the best musical acts.) So it shouldn't come as a surprise that the hive of much of Seattle's most promising musical creativity these days is the tiny storefront art and retail space Cairo, a decidedly small scale joint for whom a packed show constitutes maybe 50 people. (See also this month's review of Cairo Records' Coastal Sightings comp.) Last night, a very Cairo kind of bill took to the proper venue of Neumos for a Tuesday night showcase, and while it was only maybe twice the size of their typical crowd (with Neumos' curtain drawn to cut the showroom in half for the more intimate audience), it was a handy primer of Seattle bands to watch in 2012.