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Cosmonauts may just be the one-millionth psychedelic garage band that I've written about in my time at the Weekly Volcano, and I tell you it's the funniest thing: Though they hail from California, they sound like they could have just as easily been born out in our fair, gritty city.
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Over their 10-year career, the Purrs have exuded, above all else, a supreme sense of confidence. Every song is lavishly produced and drenched in gorgeous guitar work, every lyric almost off-handedly intoned by lead singer Jima. The casual mixing and matching of rockabilly and psychedelia and
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Let's imagine a band comprised of steaming momentum that has been abruptly decompressed and cooled in a folk-rock mold. Its members cut their teeth in art punk and prog-rock outfits, all wound up energy and attitude, when suddenly, in 2007, they came together in a kinder, gentler recording project. This
Music
Let's imagine a band comprised of steaming momentum that has been abruptly decompressed and cooled in a folk-rock mold. Its members cut their teeth in art punk and prog-rock outfits, all wound up energy and attitude, when suddenly, in 2007, they came together in a kinder, gentler recording project. This
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In my childhood home, I would often stand down the hallway from the computer room, wherein my father would sit and listen to records. Bizarre songs that seemed to go on forever that sounded like jazz, but filtered through a kind of loopy logic that always found its way back
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Roughly three weeks ago, Portlander Drew Grow (of the Pastors' Wives fame) was in a devastating automobile accident, which left him saddled with piles of medical bills, including costs covering a stay in the hospital, surgery and the months of rehabilitation he will likely need. In
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The best and worst thing about the Tacoma music scene is how tight-knit it can be. This quality can manifest itself as stubborn resistance to expanding the sonic palette of our town, but it can also result in inspiring gestures of care and support for one another. Tacoma takes care
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For the longest time, I couldn't have told you why those two W's sitting next to each other in the middle of Slowwave made me feel so uneasy. Slowwave (whom some may know as, formerly, Freeze & Fur Coat) mirror my anxieties with their music, which, lovely though it may be,
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For the longest time, I couldn't have told you why those two W's sitting next to each other in the middle of Slowwave made me feel so uneasy. Something about two W's in cahoots looked to me like dissonance. Then it hit me: Deep sleep is also known as slow-wave
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The Artichoke Project seem like pretty stressed out guys. Their songs are spindly monsters that queasily sprint on by, all blurry and confused limbs in unusual places. I suppose their music is best described as progressive rock, but it seems to lack all of the vacant noodling that is a
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Reader, I have here a handy litmus test for you: Apache Chief - a quartet from Tacoma School of the Arts who refer to their style of music as "alternative buttrock" - is readying the release of their debut LP. It is called Trail of Beers. Its
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Reader, I have here a handy litmus test for you: Apache Chief - a quartet from Tacoma School of the Arts who refer to their style of music as "alternative buttrock" - is readying the release of their debut LP. It is called Trail of Beers. Its lead track is
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Minus the violin, Solvents would still be a band worth watching and listening to - earthy, melancholy, lively in the face of heartache. They draw from indie rock godfathers who innovated by veering closer to the heart of pop music, not running away from it (Big Star, the Replacements, etc.).
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Let's do a little rock 'n' roll math, shall we? If we were to take members of Bacchus and Kill Cupid and put them together in a band, what would likely be the result? Keep in mind that Bacchus and Kill Cupid are both utterly ridiculous for very different reasons:
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Indie pop-punk heroes the Thermals began in 2002, with Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster who, after several lineup changes, have remained the band's only constants. The Thermals built a following through their high-energy performances, both live and on record, and their emotionally charged and frankly political lyrics. Even when the
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Personal Power Company is the latest entity granted corporealness by the Spaceworks Tacoma project. Crews and his fiancée, Bridgett Nicol (who identify under the titles of artistic director and executive director, respectively), were given a space from which to operate what is essentially a video
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When I spoke with Westin Glass, drummer for the Thermals, he was wandering somewhere in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the background, I could hear some mysterious trilling bird - wild turkey? angry peacock? roadrunner? - and the effect was that Glass sounded a million miles away. The trilling began as
Arts
If you are in the habit of attending local shows, you've doubtless seen Kris Crews and his camera - even if you haven't seen the fruits of his labor. Crews is a perennial mainstay in and cheerleader for the Tacoma music scene, and can often be found filming performances of
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The folk revival of the indie scene seems to find its basis in an interesting ideal: the continuing search for beauty in little moments. Though it's difficult to avoid the perception of artifice - perhaps rightly so - in hipsters reprising a genre that more or less defines itself as
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The folk revival of the indie scene seems to find its basis in an interesting ideal: the continuing search for beauty in little moments. Though it's difficult to avoid the perception of artifice - perhaps rightly so - in hipsters reprising a genre that more or less defines itself as