Get Out This Week: The Dirty Projectors + Blitzen Trapper

It's weeks like this that make us glad to be writing about rock in Seattle, because a pair of American indie's leading lights are coming to town this Thursday and Friday.

First up, Thursday night The Dirty Projectors play Chop Suey. A Brooklyn indie rock outfit started by Dave Longstretch, The Dirty Projectors are touring in support of their fascinating 2007 album Rise Above. As the story goes, Longstretch was cleaning out some of his stuff at his parents' house when he found the empty cassette case for Black Flag's Damaged. Unable to listen to his favorite childhood album, Longstretch set about reimagining the epochal punk work. Rise Above, the result, clings to the lyrical content of the original, but is hewn from completely different musical bedrock. Like fellow Brooklynites Vampire Weekened, Longstretch's guitar stylings are "borrowed" (some would say "stole") from African pop. That said, The Dirty Projectors are more ambitious than Vampire Weekend, and despite our misgivings about such cultural appropriation, we're going to give the band this band the benefit of the doubt until we see them play.

Dirty Projectors @ Chop Suey // Thurs., 8 p.m. // tix $10 adv // all-ages, bar w/ ID

Then Friday, we get Blitzen Trapper, which has got our Portlander's hometown pride swelling. Wild Mountain Nation, the fantastic 2007 LP they released after signing with Sub Pop, sounds something like CCR if John Fogerty wrote riffs like Jack White. In fact, the strange amalgam of southern rock and wild experimentation that makes Blitzen Trapper so awesome is reminiscent of The Raconteurs' Broken Boy Soldiers, which mined some of the same musical terrain. Except Blitzen Trapper, unlike The Raconteurs, hasn't released a disappointing follow-up to a promising debut. So for all y'all who can't get in to the sold-out Raconteurs' show at Neumos on the twenty-first, just look at Blitzen Trapper as the consolation prize that exceeded expectations. Plus, as a bonus you get beloved Seattle quintet Fleet Foxes as the opener.

Blitzen Trapper @ Neumos // Fri., 8 p.m. // tix $10 adv // all-ages balcony, floor 21+