Pilcrow

Head Like a Kite:



YACHT:



Nortec Collective presents Bostich & Fussible:



Lake:



Ill Cosby:



214:



Phantogram (on the Fountain Lawn stage):



Hall & Oates:



See the full Bumbershoot 2011: Monday photoset on Flickr.

I might as well keep going with quick summary reviews of the other concerts I saw at the end of the summer of 2009.

In August 2009, besides the KEXP Concerts at the Mural and BBQ, which I wrote about in the previous post, I also went to see the Animals at Night, Emilíana Torrini, and Bat for Lashes. I've already posted reviews of the latter two shows, but haven't yet covered the first one. That show was held on August 1 at the High Dive, and actually featured Elba headlining, with Another Perfect Crime, the Animals at Night, and Skeletons with Flesh on Them. I came in more than halfway through Skeletons' set, but caught them doing a good cover of the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man", and thought they had a really solid closing song too. The Animals at Night had an additional guest vocalist at this show, which I thought helped to fill out their sound, and overall it seemed to be a more downtempo and soulful set of songs than the last time I'd seen them in February. Another Perfect Crime were an indie post-punk trio who had a good strong sound that I liked. Finally, Elba didn't grab me so much, though they were all right; I thought their vocals weren't very good, not tuneful although they were trying, but they were pretty melodic and they did have serious drum chops. I have a set of photos from this show here on Flickr.

It's funny to read my notes now; for example, I don't remember anything about Elba so I'm not quite sure what I meant by "serious drum chops," though I have some idea. So that calls into question the point or value of bothering with this sort of summary post. But I never know when I may see some of these bands again, and it's good to have some record of that, if only so I can later say "I have no idea what I was thinking, these guys are great/terrible." 

In September 2009, besides covering Decibel Festival for KEXP, I went to one day at Bumbershoot and two shows, Freezepop at El Corazón and Kinski's tenth-anniversary show at Chop Suey. I don't recall anything in particular exciting me about Bumbershoot last year except that Hotels were playing, and I was able to get a volunteer shift for KEXP on Saturday that allowed me to also see their set in the EMP SkyChurch. They rocked it of course and had a cool visual display up on the digital wall. (I have some photos here on Flickr.) That night after my shift, I saw De La Soul but never really got into their set, not recognizing the old songs I knew and not caring about the newer ones or the constant crowd-rallying. 

Freezepop were also in town that Labor Day weekend, once again playing at PAX, and fortunately for me their non-PAX local show was on Sunday night, allowing me to go. Once again, their booker overstacked the show with five bands including Freezepop; in 2008 I figured this was intended to counteract the drain of Bumbershoot, but I now wonder if it was due to the show being all-ages. Unlike the diverse 2008 show, this one leaned mostly toward synth-rock, which at least fit better with Freezepop. Opening band Ocean of Algebra was fairly straightforward hard-edged rock, and I thought they were kind of catchy. Blunderbear came across as rather blundering, and spent too much time talking instead of playing. Ambulance for Angeles had actually played the 2008 show as well, and at that time I thought they needed more development; I guess they didn't develop that much, as this time I thought their midtempo croony synthpop was something like a third-rate Animals at Night. Anamanaguchi played raucous 8-bit synthrock instrumentals, with synths provided by a hacked Nintendo game system, and were surprisingly heavy, as though these clean-cut skinny geeks were secretly metalheads (which indeed is sometimes the case). Surprisingly, they finished with a cover of Weezer's "Buddy Holly", including singing the vocals. Finally, Freezepop overcame persistent microphone troubles to deliver a freeform set that felt a bit loose and ragged at times, but was still a hugely fun send-off for the Duke, who was performing for the last time with the band. I was very excited that they included a dance remix of "Tenisu No Boifurendo", one of my favorites, which they rarely play live. They also did "Plastic Stars", the Duke's favorite of their own songs, as an unplanned encore—so unplanned that the house lights and music had been turned on, but the audience chants of "Freezepop!" couldn't be denied. I have a set of photos from this show here on Flickr. 

I actually have decent notes for Kinski's tenth-anniversary show, and as I wrote out the summary it got long enough that I decided to put it into its own post, since this one became fairly long.

I had a pretty good time at Bumbershoot this year. I was going to do a single post about it, because I thought I could keep it short, but of course it's just gotten longer and longer as I write. So, I'm going to do separate posts for each day after all. All of my photos can be found in my Bumbershoot 2008 set on Flickr.

Read about Sunday at Bumbershoot 2008.

Read about Monday at Bumbershoot 2008.

Saturday

Beehive had an unenviable slot, opening Bumbershoot at noon on Saturday, and a difficult space, being on the smallest stage, tucked away in a corner of the Seattle Center out of sight or even hearing from most of the festival. So I was concerned whether they'd have much of an audience, but fortunately the seats were mostly full by the time they started, and stayed that way through the set with additional people wandering up too. Beehive went for a heavier rock sound to start and covered Queen's "We Will Rock You" as well as the Beatles' "Helter Skelter", presumably to help warm up a crowd unfamiliar with their work. They've been playing "Helter Skelter" for a while and bring their own sound to it, but I felt "We Will Rock You" didn't fit so well with the rest of their songs. Still, it was a good set overall and they definitely won over some new fans. [Beehive photos start here.]

After Beehive, I wandered a bit, running into the dance troupe acornDance doing a funny performance, until I met up with my friend Gina, and we went to see Barcelona. Quite simply, Barcelona sounded like they heard Jeff Buckley's song "The Last Goodbye" and said, "Let's make a band!" Sure, they picked a good song to emulate, but... they needed a little more than that. Gina and I wandered around for a while after that, and stumbled across a performance of Byron Au Yong's "Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas", which involved musicians playing percussion in the Du Pont Fountain pool and playing the water itself as a percussion instrument. That was pretty cool, and I wish I'd seen more of it or caught another performance later in the weekend. However, Gina and I both wanted to get some food and try to catch Nada Surf in the secret KEXP Lounge, so we didn't stick around for the whole thing. While we were eating, we missed out on getting spare tickets into the Nada Surf show, which perhaps is poetic justice. [Photos of acornDance start here and photos of "Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas" start here.]

Gina had to leave early, and after hanging out with David and Alethea of Beehive for a while, it was time for me to catch Mono in VCF. Despite spending at least 10-15 minutes on a sound check before their set started, the band suffered from feedback problems for the first half of their set. Several of the songs also sounded a bit rushed, as though they just wanted to get through as many songs as they could, which was unfortunate as their lush, expansive music needs space to breathe to achieve its full effect. On the positive side, the EMP's SkyChurch performance hall is well-suited to their sound and image, and undoubtedly they made a better impression on new listeners because of it than they would have on one of the outdoor stages. They played a couple new songs and brought out Mark Pickerel as a guest vocalist to sing a duet with Kim Miller, the Lee Hazelwood song "Some Velvet Morning". It was a good set, but I've heard them play better, and much as I love their debut I'm still eagerly awaiting more new music from them. [Just three photos of Mono in VCF, starting here.]

After Mono in VCF, I left Bumbershoot for the day, as I already had plans to go see Freezepop at El Corazón. I'll write up that show once I've finished the rest of the Bumbershoot reports.