Cool Customers: Sea Wolf, Tiny Vipers, Molly Rose @ the Crocodile

Last night at the Crocodile was one of those evenings you stumble on where things just keep getting better and better. We went down to see headliners Sea Wolf [MySpace] after hearing them do an in-studio bit at KEXP (not posted yet). About two songs in, the indie-folk melodies and lead singer's baritone duets with cello swept us and Shelves of Vinyl off our feet.

They're a six-piece -- Alex Brown Church on vocals and acoustic guitar, Lisa Fendelander, keyboards; Theodore Liscinski, bass; Aniela Perry, cello; Byron Reynolds, drums; Aaron Robinson, electric guitar -- touring for their EP Get To The River Before It Runs Too Low. (Here's an earlier KEXP write-up, with a "You're a Wolf" mp3 and the YouTube video.) Place, being from somewhere, and seasons feature prominently in their lyrics. Two songs mention gypsies, and they opened the show with one with a gypsy tune (the keyboard playing an accordion duet with the cello). They closed with "The Garden that You Planted," a long, sweet "awwwww" of a song about long-distance romance.

We hadn't heard of Tiny Vipers [MySpace], middle on the bill, even though Jesy Fortino is Seattle-based and on the Sub Pop label. From a distance her music looks like acoustic singer/songwriter fare, but it borrows the heavy reverb and repetition of shoegazerdom, and then there's Fortino's voice, a husky, breathy alto that can bring to mind CocoRosie or Jesse Sykes or Cat Power, depending. Her song "Swastika" goes "If I would let you into my heart/would you thank the Lord/would you tear it apart?" She played her entire set with her eyes closed, glancing down at her guitar every once in a while. It wasn't the smoothest set, a connection was loose and the sound sputtered during one song, her guitar wasn't tuned well in another, and then she played the wrong note a few times. To quote her lyrics, "at least I'm trying." July 24 she's at Sonic Boom, August 3 at the Triple Door -- she's worth a listen.

Opening was the lovely and talented Molly Rose [MySpace], who we know from Victrola, and who has got her acoustic singer/songwriter sound dialed in, strummed rhythm, string squeak, and an incredibly dynamic voice, with overtones that make a single line sound both about ready to cry and cry out. Her lyrics are a poetry of secret observations -- you have to listen closely, and she rarely sacrifices depth for a hook. More often, when it comes to the expected chorus, she modulates and the song heads off for new pastures. Her EP is My Skin, Your Bones. (Download "Here Comes the Light" and "In Your Heart.") Man, we could listen to this stuff all day. We just might.