As you may have heard, 2012 marks Three Imaginary Girls' 10th anniversary of being Seattle's sparkly indie-pop press and we can't think of a more imaginary way to celebrate than with a big bash with some of our favorite rockstars and YOU!
On Friday, June 1st at Chop Suey, we're going to host the biggest TIG birthday party of all imaginary time with some of Seattle's most stellar rockstars taking the karaoke mic to sing in the key of new wave, including:
Sean Nelson
Lesli Wood
Megan Seling
Jenny Jimenez
Shane Tutmarc
Alicia Amiri
Cristina Bautista
Anna Banana Lange
Jenny George
and members of:
Visqueen
The Young Evils
Exohxo
Tullycraft
Math & Physics Club
Tennis Pro
Mal de Mer
Black Nite Crash
Kithkin
The Mangles
Your Favorite Book
Noddy
It can't get any more astonishing, right? Well, the rockstars aren't the only ones taking the mic, we want YOU to sing too! Throughout the night, audience members can volunteer to take the Chop Suey stage by storm to karaoke their favorite new wave hit. Folks will be chosen first come, first served, so get there and turn in your song early (doors are at 8:30pm)!
To add to the birthday merriment, the evening is going to be hosted by imaginary Dana and Adrian LeFluer (of Iron Composer fame), who you might remember stealing the show as emcee at our 69 Love Songs cover night a few years back.
Get your ticket to the night of new wave love and big imaginary fun now!
As an added bonus for those at the show, you can be the first to pick up a copy of the Imaginary Zine! A printed old school zine recounting our first 10 years in stories and recounted memories from our imaginary friends. It will have a special (glow in the dark and sparkly) screenprinted cover (thanks Seattle Show Posters / 112 Printworks!) and a cd chock full of rare, live, or exclusive songs by some of our favorite local artists, including The Long Winters, BOAT, Exohxo, The Femurs, Tullycraft and MORE! It's limited to a hand-numbered print run of only 333, so you should make plans to pick up your copy at the show.
There's been an incredible current underfoot in our fair city these past few weeks, as two noteworthy nonprofits -- the Seattle Theater Group and 826 Seattle -- have been gearing up for their annual fundraising events. On April 28th, STG presented DOORS: Opening Doors to the Arts, a combination dinner, live show and paddle raise held at the Paramount Theater that funds dozens of incredible programs and community initiatives each year. Between the silent and live auctions and the actual straight-donation paddle raise that collectively brought in over $430,000.00 {!!!}, there was also a live show featuring some of the teachers, students, and performance groups that STG has been able to reach out and impact -- and a special performance from Allen Stone with members of the Seattle Rock Orchestra.
This has actually been lingering in my inbox for awhile (sorry guys!) but I finally had time to take a proper listen, and am ready to declare that Sweet Diss and the Comebacks is joining the list of my new favorite PNW bands!
Nathan Reinauer hales from Seattle and currrently lives in Portland - and also apparently created some of the best stuff I've heard in awhile by performing, mixing, and mastering every note on Emerald City Love Song himself. Bravo, Nathan. Bravo. It's sweet and danceable ad power-poppy and. Oh hey. I LOVE IT!
I also appreciate this description from their bandcamp page:
Catchy melodies, soaring harmonies, and more key changes than your ex-girlfriend's apartment.
Yup. That about sums it up! Take a listen to "Twenty-Something" below (I also recommend "Indie Girl", "Never Stop Wooing You" and "Dear Small Town", and if you like - you can listen to the whole album on bandcamp here, buy it on iTunes here, or order it from Japan (what?) to get it with 4 extra tracks.
Seattle post-punk(ish) new wave band Hotels just released their latest EP Cinemascope I, the first of a series of three EPs that the band plan to put out. With this four song EP, Hotels sound as solid as ever; from the looping, jangly sound of album opener "The Reddest Rose" to the creeping bass line from front man Blake Madden on "Unknown Quadrant." Their 2011 release On The Casino Floor was a concept album about a casino in space (seriously!) and that aesthetic is returned to on the psychedelic, six-minute closing track "True Crime." You can listen to {and download} the entire EP at Hotel's Bandcamp page here.
In celebration, Hotels will be playing a show this Friday {4/27} at Columbia City Theater, and we'd love to send you and a friend to the show on us! Just shoot us an email to tig {at} three imaginary girls {dot} com anytime before the end of the day on Thursday -- yep, that's tomorrow! -- for a chance to win. Be sure to put "SendMeToHotels" in the subject line so we know it's you.
And ps, we'd be crazy not to mention that Noddy and Sports will be opening the show: in case you're not familiar, Noddy started as the solo project of former Man Plus front man Jared Mills, and has since evolved into a fully formed 5 piece band, releasing their 13-track debut album last fall titled Murder! Dance! Kill!. And Sports are equally synth-laden and just as influenced by 80's new wave, so be sure to wear your dancing shoes. Their latest self titled release can be found in name-your-price form at the bands bandcamp page here.
As an added treat, Hotels will be joined on stage by Adra Boo of Seattle soul/groove duo Fly Moon Royalty. All of this for a mere six dollars? Seattle, you'd be silly to skip this show. We'll see you there!
{9p / $6 advance, $8 day of show / 21+}
Latest comment by: Ruby A.: "SendMeToHotels I want to go pretty please!!"
Prom Queen, the newest solo project by my pretty friend Leeni, has a lush 60s-esque sound that started as covers and has now evolved into an album full of original songs called Night Sound that will be released offcially on 4/24 at The Can Can.
Simliar in feel to her Romeo + Juliet project (whose album I reviewed last Spring), Night Sound is tailor-made for David Lynch films. Packed full of romantic, dark tunes with vintage appeal -- and I still don't understand why he hasn't called Leeni up and asked her to make him a soundtrack, like NOW. Sounds great, right? And The Can Can is the perfect venue for Prom Queen's CD release...so I'll see all you Muholland Dr. fans there.
Side note: I like to think that she made the spooky video for "Black + Blue" above just for me (she didn't, but I like to THINK it anyway), because HELLO. It's scary! And rad. And I ♥ it.
{Prom Queen with Vince Mira | The Can Can | April 24 | 9pm | 21+ | $7}
I'm almost not quite sure how to begin recounting last night's show at the Fremont Abbey {Round #83, with Damien Jurado, The Head and the Heart's Jonathan Russell, and members of Pretty Broken things, two painters, and a poet} in a way that conveys it with proper justice. So far as layperson's terms go, it was just a show: two forty-five minute sets on a stage, three lead singers trading off turns, with active art creation on the side and yes, even the poetry was good. But when you take two powerful frontmen and put them in such an intimate setting -- you're bound to win big. And I think I can speak for the entire sold-out room when I say that everybody won last night.
Between getting to see Damien Jurado's work showcased at such a tangible, stripped-away scale {both through selections from Maraqopa and long-standing favorites like "Sheets"} and Jonathan Russell's raw-yet-polished abandon {several new-to-me songs, a Bill Withers cover, and an incredible closing number about getting postcards you don't want that's been rattling in my brain since The Head and the Heart's Easy Street set last year}, we were taken on a collective journey through the soundscape that engaged both the audience and the other members on stage in a way you just don't see at a one-band-at-a-time rehearsed show. Such is the beauty of seeing performers in the round.
Latest comment by: imaginary victoria: "hey spiro, I didn't want to be disruptive to the performance and had to shoot "around" the folks sitting in front of us -- no, nothing I managed to get of her came out. :("
This album, Perfume Genius's second, sounds like a still-moment widescreen car-crash at first -- a horrifying accident beautifully caught by gleaming, descending keys and soft male siren voice. "AWOL Marine" is Mike Hadreas at his most ethereal, the art of ghosting other lost souls musicalized. Put Your Back N 2 It then smokes out that slive of a song, and another reed-thin fragment flickers by: "Normal Song," with more lyrics about nursing the chronic, swooning over the sick, but this time, for the first time for PG, it's gently croaked over twangy acoustic guitar.
The third, "No Tear," is when Antony of Antony & The Johnstons comes in for a bit of a duet, in which the suffering abides by grace. And then Mike's own voice sounds even more like Art Garfunkel's -- which presents a problem. The rest of the album is inarguably gorgeous, full of resignation yet pulling out of black despair. But there's no tough Paul Simon stoicism, embrace of worldly anxiety to rise above.
Remember how I told y'all to be at The High Dive on Friday to see the most excellent PDX band Blue Skies for Black Hearts take the stage? I hope at least some of you made it out, because they TOTALLY ROCKED IT. (duh, like they wouldn't)
Anyway! There was a last-minute band addition, so BS4BH played first, and super-early, starting their set just after 9pm. I am happy to report that even though the crowd was scarce, the boys gathered an impressive menagerie of dancing (in Seattle? WHAT?) groups near the stage by the time they were 2 songs in to the set. The boys in The Ames (the Belligham-based band that followed) seemed particularly impressed, and were very enthusiastic about getting down to some grooves. Again: dancing? in Seattle? WHAT. Just another of the many side-effects Blue Skies offers when rocking their audiences' socks off.
{More photos after the jump}
{Photo by Peter Ellenby}
We love the expansive, inclusive pop sound of Anacortes-based The Lonely Forest so much we imagined listening to their previous release was akin to infusing your body with light drawn directly from the heart of the sun. The 2006 Sound Off! winners have only grown since then, signing with Chris Walla’s Trans Records, and releasing Arrows last March. In a combination as brilliant as chocolate and peanut butter, they’ll be playing a special show with the Seattle Rock Orchestra at the Neptune on Saturday.
If all that wasn’t enough to earn them Recommended Show status, Black Whales will be opening. If you haven’t heard this mid-fi, 60s-tinged, Richard Ashcroft-gone-country band yet, don’t wait until Sasquatch. Black Whales’ album Shangri La Indeed! was released last June, a fact that will be quite familiar to regular readers, because we just can’t stop talking about, and watching, this great local band.
While you’re waiting for Saturday night, take a listen to a few tracks after the jump:
One of the excellent bands that caught my attention last year is Portland's Blue Skies for Black Hearts, who opened for Tennis Pro last summer. You guys, I'm not kidding - I was BLOWN AWAY by these boys, and rushed over to (drunkenly) buy a CD as soon as they finished their set. They had several to choose from, but I picked up their latest, Embracing the Modern Age, because it had this amazing retro-poppy song on it called "Caroline Make Up Your Mind" and that was stuck in my head forevs. Anyway, they are playing in Seattle next Friday, 3/9 at the High Dive, and we are giving away a pair of tickets! Which is awesome, because I keep telling you guys how great they are, and I feel like no one is listening to me.
GUYS. GO TO THIS SHOW AND CHECK THEM OUT. TRUST ME. THEY RULE.
Okay, now that I got that off my chest: email tig {at} threeimaginarygirls {dot} com with the subject line "Damn Those Girls" anytime between now and 5pm next Tuesday {3/6}. We'll choose a winner and notify you by email sometime on Wednesday to let you know you're on the list. Good luck!
{High Dive | 21+ | $7 | 9pm doors. Playing with Pocket Panda and The Ames.}
Recent comments
The Drums + Craft Spells = total dance party!
The Drums + Craft Spells = total dance party!
The Drums + Craft Spells = total dance party!
The Drums + Craft Spells = total dance party!
Willis Earl Beal wows small crowd at Barboza
Recommended Event: SIFF 2012 Opening Night {5/17}
Willis Earl Beal wows small crowd at Barboza
Willis Earl Beal wows small crowd at Barboza
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