Everybody, Come Out... to the Sunset, for Pomegranates!
Mid-November can be a trying time. Maybe you don't have Veterans Day off work. Maybe your pant legs are always wet from the rain. Maybe you can't wait for the holiday season, or maybe you're dreading gift-giving and family time. And maybe you just don't know how you'll survive without Four Loko. But whatever your problems may be, tonight the Sunset Tavern has the solution.
Pomegranates, a Cincinnati four-piece with a sound as distinctive and sweet as the taste of its namesake fruit, will soften the gritty edges of the Sunset tonight with some infectiously upbeat sounds. Play on KEXP helped the group's first release, Everything Is Alive, become a top 20 CMJ hit, while the band's more polished sophomore release Everybody, Come Outside! features a title track that's simple and joyous yet sonically rich, combining stuttering rhythms with just-imperfect-enough harmonies. Listen to this song once and see if you don't become a convert. Pomegranates' most recent album, One of Us (on Afternoon Records, home to other impossibly cute groups like We All Have Hooks for Hands) continues the tradition of carefully crafted yet always inviting songs, incorporating space-age jangles and down-to-earth yearning.
Leading into the Pomegranates' set will be Oh No Oh My, an adorably earnest Austin foursome due to release a new album titled People Problems early next year, and Eux Autres (or Ex-Otters, if you will), a band ballsy enough to describe its sound as "the unrequited love song Doug Martsch would have penned for Francoise Hardy, had the time/space continuum conveniently collapsed." Do you really need more motivation to come to this show?
Enjoying bands that play happy music may sometimes seem like drinking the (super sweet) Kool-Aid of indie pop, but it also feels so good that you just won't care. This three-course pop showcase might be a little too sweet for some grungy Seattleites, but we urge you to give some upbeat (but not sappy) music a chance, and we promise that tonight will provide enough sonic sunshine to get you through till spring.
9:30 pm, Sunset Tavern (5433 Ballard Avenue NW), $8 tickets, 21+
