Show Review: The Gaslight Anthem @ the Crocodile

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The Gaslight Anthem @ the Crocodile, July 8th
Review by M. Crossley

I’m a nostalgic man. I am also a highly superstitious man who is not in the slightest religious.

The Gaslight Anthem is one of my favorite bands currently making music, and I never miss the chance to see them perform live. Usually when they play Seattle it’s at the end of September or the beginning of October in support of their newest album. They play one of the larger all-ages venues, and I use the show as a eulogy to a season that has just passed. I drink beers in the bar area and come up front and sing Brian Fallon’s words back at him as if he didn’t know them already. I’ve seen Gaslight three times prior to last night’s performance. When I make reference to myself not being religious, it’s not a frivolous statement – The Gaslight Anthem is the church of punk rock and roll. I’ve been baptized in the sweat of six hundred strangers. And brother. . . Brother, I am saved.

With every new release, The Gaslight Anthem seems to get bigger and bigger. Being a band with working class punk roots, The GA wanted to do a smaller club tour before their new album, Handwritten, drops at the end of this month. It will surely rocket them into yet bigger venues, but lose touch with the sweat and intimacy of smaller stages and rabid believers that know every word to every single song. That is what brought them to Seattle’s Crocodile this past Sunday night, performing to a sold-out room of adoring fans foaming at the mouth for that savage séance only achieved through the prayer of the sing-along.


The Gaslight Anthem – photo by M. Crossley

It was almost 80 degrees outside, hot for Seattle. The room was packed when opener Dave Hause came out to do an acoustic set. He fronts New Jersey band The Loved Ones, and had a pretty good following nodding along to his earnest folk punk a la Fifteen, Lit and Rise Against. Even in the palpable heat and overcrowded conditions, the audience had that “we’re all in this together” vibe. Smiles and applause all around. When someone stepped on your foot or accidentally knocked over your PBR, they apologized profusely. We’re in church here after all.

When The Gaslight Anthem took the stage promptly at 10:30 they had immediate attention of the crowd. Throngs of girls and boys, men and women with rounds of drinks pushed their way forward into the bouillabaisse. The preacher was in the pulpit. The sermon was to begin.

Starting with “Great Expectations” off their beloved The ‘59 Sound album, the crowd was in thrall. I stood stage left with my own parcel of PBRs, trying to observe the show as a reporter. I did my job valiantly for the first few songs, trying to capture some photos with my phone and look at everything with a discerning eye. The fourth song was “Angry Johnny and the Radio” I put my phone back in my pocket, left my beer and pogoed my way up front. I ain’t been to church in nigh on twenty years, but I never remember any cameras being there. This is salvation. My rock redemption. And I have to be right there singing his words to him, lest he forget them.

The Gaslight Anthem played for an hour and a half. The whole room before them writhing and jumping and singing along at the top of their lungs. This was not a “pit” in the usual sense of the word. We were all laughing, and smiling, and cheersing our beers. Stopping all movement when someone lost their glasses on the floor.

I understand the Faces and Oasis have sold out Wembley, the largest stadium in the world. and I’ve heard the recordings from those shows, an audience sing-along that drowns out everything else in its aura. Fuck five hundred thousand. . . Give me a room full of six hundred adoring fans in a small club singing along to “We’re Getting a Divorce, You Keep the Dinner.”

By the end of their encore set, everyone in the pit had embraced, or hugged, or smiled at one another while yelling lyrics in each other’s faces. The beautiful girls swooning dreamily, and heaping heavy accolades on Brian Fallon with their eyes. The man had to mention that he’s married several times, yet still girls jumped on the stage – one even doing cartwheels, and wouldn’t leave until Fallon sated her with the promise of free T-shirts from the merch booth.

We were having a great time in church; we never wanted it to end. Our sweat had been shared and passed like communion, our mutual love unrequited. The Gaslight Anthem saw fit to end this encore set with “We Came to Dance” into “The ‘59 Sound.” Glossolalia ensued.


The Gaslight Anthem – photo by M. Crossley

Show Review & Photos: Quintron and Miss Pussycat @ Chop Suey

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The Party in the Swamp – Quintron and Miss Pussycat @ Chop Suey, July 6th

Review by Blake Madden
Photos by Dagmar

It was perhaps nine years ago during a Quintron show at New York’s Knitting Factory that a male member of the audience stripped completely nude, danced his way over to a wall, and scaled his way up to the mezzanine. This isn’t the type of spectacle the Knitting Factory is known for, but it is the type that a Quintron and Miss Pussycat show can inspire. For years, the husband and wife duo have crisscrossed the country with their homegrown puppet show and swamp go-go dance party, eviscerating audience ho-hummery in a hail of sweat and maracas, Quintron’s roided-out Hammond organ cascading over hopped-up beats from the Casio keyboard you owned when you were 11. Sooner or later, every audience falls under the hypnotic spell of the mystery power couple from New Orleans, some to greater effect than others.


Quintron


Quintron and Miss Pussycat


Miss Pussycat

Friday’s crowd at Chop Suey took some warming up, seemingly split down the middle between true believers and Quintron virgins promised a next level ‘happening’. Support band Dent May played an admirable set of pure, unpretentious, shimmering pop. Then Quintron set pieces were quickly and quietly moved into place. The puppet show stage. The custom organ/synth combo, complete with Oldsmobile front grill, working headlights, and Louisiana plates. The ‘Drum Buddy’- a light-activated analog synthesizer of Quintron’s own invention. A trio of candles atop the massive organ speaker. Because it’s all about mood, baby.

The set began with both performers out of sight, working the hand puppets for the Miss Pussycat-led puppet show (she’s the principle puppeteer while he does most of the musical heavy lifting). This season’s variation of the show involved two friends engaging in space travel. They go to the moon looking for a party, but instead are chased by Dracula. They land on a different planet full of rainbows, defeat Dracula, and party happily ever after, all to a soundtrack of dinky keyboards. If none of this sounds charming to you at all, you should probably stop reading and go back to beating your puppy with a shoe.


Puppets

Quintron’s aggressive yet simple party boogies aren’t the part to write home about, it’s the force of his delivery. He’s the buffalo of musical performance: every part of his body is used, feet slapping pedals and playing a hi-hat, hands slamming down on keys or changing cones and oscillations on The Drum Buddy, his nose stopping the drum machine atop his organ, his mouth occasionally holding a tiny microphone he wails into distortedly. I’ve yet to hear a recording that accurately captures the frenzy of his performance, or the frenzy it inspires.

Those who were still unconvinced halfway in were won over by the crowd-pleaser “Swamp Buggy Badass,” and Quintron descending into the audience to embrace and sing to individual audience members. “You are a badass,” he told us. “I’m a motherfuckin’ badass,” he told us. “She’s a streetwalkin’ badass,” he told us. We were all badasses. And this is the beauty of Quintron – something sinister yet wholesome and inclusive all at once. Something dangerous, yet safe at the same time, its rock and roll brutality muted by things like hand puppets and instruments that have headlights. There was a pit filled with happy drunks instead of angry ones, more frolicking than anything else. A sea of balloons bounced to and from the stage. Ten audience members ended up singing backup alongside Miss Pussycat and her maracas, neither she nor Quintron missing a beat. And then it was over, almost abruptly, the tornado quickly evaporating from sight.

Always go see a Quintron and Miss Pussycat live show. Their brand of happy-go-lucky black magic and Swamp Buggy Badassery has to be experienced firsthand or not at all.


Quintron


Miss Pussycat


Puppets

More photos of Quintron and Miss Pussycat @ Chop Suey

Show Review & Photos: Carson Henley, Sara Jackson-Holman & James Redfern @ the Columbia City Theater

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Carson Henley, Sara Jackson-Holman & James Redfern @ the Columbia City Theater, Saturday July 7th
Show Review & Photos by Heather Fitzpatrick

Carson Henley celebrated his CD release for 100 Hours Saturday night with a few of his closest friends. Well over 300 of them, as a matter of fact, selling out the Columbia City Theater in Seattle. The show was amazing, and if you don’t want to take my word for it, you can check out Carson’s Facebook post he made the morning after the show. Part of his message to his fans included the following: “Last night was seriously amazing. Probably the best moment of my life in my musical career!”


Carson Henley

I have no doubt that Carson will have many more events like this in the upcoming years, as he continues to release soulful tunes that can get just about anyone off their feet and dance. His commitment and dedication to his 100 Hours album proves that nothing can stand in his way. Sara Jackson-Holman of Portland, and James Redfern (who also plays lead guitar for Carson) and his band opened the show.


Carson Henley


Sara Jackson-Holman


James Redfern

Photos: Bass Drum of Death @ the Sunset

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Bass Drum of Death put on a stirring show the other week at the Sunset. This Mississippi group’s sound is just dirty. Dirty. Their debut EP, GB City, came out in April 2011 – recorded by Bass Drum of Death’s John Barrett, who, according to the band’s bio, was “Fat Possum’s worst employee 3 years ago.” My photos follow:


Bass Drum of Death – all photos by Dagmar

More photos of Bass Drum of Death @ the Sunset

Show Review & Photos: ZooTunes w/ k.d. lang & The Milk Carton Kids @ the Zoo

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Lions, and Tigers, and lang! Oh My!
k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang with The Milk Carton Kids @ ZooTunes, July 3rd
Review & Photos by Jimmy Lovaas

k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang played to an audience of giraffes, Chilean flamingos, and meerkats Tuesday night. Also in attendance: approximately 4,000 adoring human fans.

lang returned to Woodland Park Zoo for the second year in a row as part of the park’s summer concert series, ZooTunes. And judging by the audience’s overwhelmingly positive response, it was a good choice.


k.d lang

Luckily, the crowd that braved the rain and unseasonably cool weather on their way to the concert only faced a light mist by the time opening act, The Milk Carton Kids, took the stage. The “kids,” in this case, are Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, a pair of acoustic guitar-wielding 20-somethings from Los Angeles who are billed as a “harmonizing minimalist duo.” They are definitely a group to watch.

At first glance the duo looks like an advertisement for a hipster magazine, but once their mouths open you realize they’re much deeper than that. Playing their own version of Americana folk that was reminiscent of Simon & Garfunkel, and breaking up the set with dry and quirky humor that the audience ate up, The Milk Carton Kids were easily the surprise, if not the highlight of the evening.


The Milk Carton Kids

I know, I know. “How could that possibly be the highlight,” you ask? Well, to be brutally honest, everyone already knows that lang is going to deliver a great show. Even on an off night that woman could probably sing the Teletubbies theme song and mesmerize a crowd. So when she plays a show and sings some of her best hits like “Hallelujah,” the crowd gets exactly what they’re expecting. And while that’s a great thing, it’s not exactly a surprise. What was a surprise was just how strong she and her new alt-country band, The Siss Boom Bang, started off the show.

Their first song out of the gate was “I Confess” – and she was even sporting a similar red scarf and black-on-black western ensemble like she wore in the video for that song. And, by the end of the first verse when she sang the words “love me madly,” it was already clear that she was going to get what she asked for.

A short time later when she sang “Hallelujah” (her money song – you know, the one that probably sold half the tickets in the show) the crowd was ready to attend the First Church of k.d. lang. As she rang out the last note, the crowd rose to their feet and applauded for nearly a minute.

If I had one complaint about the show, it would be that while Lang poured her heart into every song, her nearly incessant use of the phrase “ladies and gentleman” and her wow-this-sounds-rehearsed dialogue in between songs really distracted from the music. It didn’t help that she was reusing some of her old jokes nearly word for word.

The reality is, however, that it would have been next to impossible to distract anyone from her incredible performance of “Sugar Buzz” that night and her amazing, though almost unrecognizable, rendition of Talking Heads’ “Heaven” was enough to make me forget about all the banter she was serving in between songs. Finally, by the time she did her cover of Little River Band’s “Reminiscing” I had forgotten that I was supposed to be taking notes for this review and not just daydreaming.

But that’s what lang does best. She makes you forget where you are. The skies might have been overcast and grey, and a good percentage of the audience might have still been donning their rain parkas, but the look on their faces said it all. In their minds they were somewhere warm 20 years ago. Something I appreciated as I strolled past the penguin exhibit on my way out of the venue.


k.d. lang


The Milk Carton Kids


Atmosphere @ ZooTunes