Bumbershoot starts off Saturday with arguably the best all-around lineup of artists and performers at the three-day festival. For what it’s worth, the weather is supposed to be decent, but there aren’t any guarantees. The forecast isn’t totally inspiring, but we’ll take anything short of an outright downpour as a win. As an all-knowing, all-seeing hivemind, Seattlest has your Bumbershoot recommendations handled. If you're going to brave the crowds, bathroom lines, and ever-present corporate tents,......

Electro-Pop: Matmos released their new record, Supreme Balloon, to acclaim back on May 6. The Baltimore-based pop/electronica duo have moved away from the conceptual electronic compositions of their earlier work and deliver a record of "cosmic pop" deliciousness. Check out the song "Rainbow Flag" [mp3] here, and check out the band down at the Triple Door tonight. 8 p.m. // 216 Union St. // $20 (+ don't forget about the Triple Door's seating policy) Guilty......

Last night, Bumbershoot announced the first set of acts slated for this year's festival. So far, there's a name or two that could draw us to Seattle Center this Labor Day weekend. Beck? Hell yes! A reunited Stone Temple Pilots? Not so much. Beck / Stone Temple Pilots / Lucinda Williams / Neko Case / Ingrid Michaelson / Jakob Dylan / Del Tha Funky Homosapien / !!! / Lee "Scratch" Perry / Saul Williams......

If you’re gonna make an album with orchestral arrangements care of living legend composer Van Dyke Parks, you’re gonna have to go all out to perform it right. That’s why the first half of super English major/elven queen Joanna Newsom’s grandiose show last night at Benaroya Hall featured the accompaniment of local 29-piece chamber orchestra the Northwest Sinfonia to cover her last full-length, the epic five-song masterpiece Ys ("ees"). It’s not hard to recreate......

Sunday afternoon turned out to be a terrific time to hit the Fremont Oktoberfest: at one o' clock it was still gray and cloudy and the crowds hadn't arrived. For $5 extra, we ended up with a total of eight tokens, good for eight 5-oz. pours. Our initial plan was to drink anything that was named "Oktoberfest," but there were only two Oktoberfest beers that weren't tapped out (or called Beck's): Lang Creek's Oktoberfest and......

Wowee wow wow wow. The erstwhile "Japanese Beck" Cornelius really brought it at El Corazon the other night. Keigo Oyamada (as his mama calls him) and the other three members of his fashionable group made sure that the "Sensuous Synchronized Show" lived up to its name. They put on a performance that was multimedia to the extreme, with scrims and colors and lights and videos that were a little more than the venue could......

Seattlest got paid today. What does that mean? Off to the record store we go. On our list today: Sufjan Stevens: Songs For Christmas (for tolerable Christmas music at home this year), Built To Spill: You In Reverse (finally), Joanna Newsom: Ys (we just stumbled upon her online today), and The Shins: Phantom Limb EP (for the wife. She finds them just adorable). So what's the rest of Seattle listening to this week? Here are......

--The hero of the Jewish Federation shootings had her child Tuesday and named it Charley Paz. --Biodiesel consumers, you need to add some petroleum product to that tank or you're going nowhere in this weather. --If you've recently been browsing the Amazon reviews of Hothouse Flowers and thought that something didn't quite seem right... --Japanese culture police will soon be dispatched to the globe's sushi restaurants to ensure an authentic experience. We're not saying......

On Tuesday, the American -ists will be celebrating democracy and hitting the polls, letting politicians know what they really think. It just made us wonder: if it were up to the -ist-a-verse, what would we be voting for? Londonist votes for better skincare, alternative spaces for art, cute little birds and the men who keep them, and concrete. Lots of concrete. Shanghaiist votes for one of the Bee Gees and Air Supply (it's a double-ticket),......

The last time Jamie Moyer was involved in a trade, it was almost a gift to the M's. They got their all-time winningest pitcher in franchise history (145), the Red Sox got 2 1/2 years of the execrable Darren Bragg. And today, the Mariners re-gifted Jamie Moyer, to the Phillies, for two minor league pitchers, neither of whom are very good. It seems to us a shame that you'd trade away your franchise pitching leader......

So much is in the delivery. The unsteady, sunburned drinker who wearily slurred his estimate of the time he'd spent drinking Sunday somehow packed cosmic distances into his phrasing. Or there were the two young men, fleeing the rain shower, bleating: "What's gone wrong? Where are the naked hippies? Where are the naked hippies!" People certainly do drink up at the Gorge. Maybe it's that country air. Saturday night we were down on the......

-How many more "kid stumbles on human remains" stories is it going to take to get the whole area declared a cemetery? Is it just us or have there been a ton of these lately? -In another disturbing trend, a high school student in Kent planned a shooting spree but confessed his plot to investigators rather than actually carrying it out. Good choice, kid. -The Stranger's got the Great Blue Hope Darcy Burner's responses......

Tired of sitting around with your friends looking stupid? Of course you are! So get off your ass and check these shows out… Tuesday 14th: -Dr. John’s at Dimitiou’s Jazz Alley Admission: $26.50 to $28.50; 7:30 pm -Varmint: Wayne Horvitz + Robin Holcomb + Tim Young (and featuring Charlie Beck and Joe Fulton from The Tallboys) at Lottie Motts Admission: $5.00; 8:00 pm Wednesday 15th: -“Start a nuclear war! At the gay bar!” -Electric Six......

Call Rumsfeld! The United Kingdom is exporting weapons of mass distortion to the U.S.! [Insert laugh-track] Hovering between #7 and #10 on the Sonic Boom Top Seller lists is the debut album, “Everything Is,” by Nine Black Alps. (Easy Street is nearly a week late in posting their list, so who knows what’s going on over there.) Hailing from Manchester, England, Nine Black Alps traveled to Los Angeles to record with producer Rob Schnapf......

If you are a fan of the Arcade Fire (and if you don't have a ticket for their Wednesday night show at the Paramount), then you might want to get your indie fix at the Architecture in Helsinki show Thursday night at Neumo's. Both bands have a penchant for wacky instrumentation combined male and female indie-style singing. Plus, their songs are dance-able, which is never a bad scene (unless of course you have seen us......

Tonight, if you aren't going to see DJ-AM (you fool!), your best bet is Beck and Le Tigre at the Paramount. We know that Beck is a Scientologist, but at least he didn't yell at Matt Laurer (or if he did, it was in private). If you're feeling nostalgic for 1993, then Evan Dando at the Tractor is your thing. We don't know if Evan is as dreamy as he was back then, but here's......

We've been through the Underground Tour several times and read Sons of the Profits, but it occurred to not-originally-from-here Seattlest that we could stand to increase our knowledge of Seattle history. So, encouraged by Jonathan Raban's recommendation of it as "one of the very best informal, intimate histories anywhere," we picked up a library copy of Murray Morgan's Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle to read between films at SIFF. It's informal, and not......

We usually don't like to talk about shows in the past and/or in a completely different city, but this one involves pure comedic gold. Everyone's favorite scientologist/hipster (scientologister?) Beck performed an allegedly secret show in New York City. As Tom DeLay can undoubtedly testify, it's hard to keep a secret these days, so the show sold out almost immediately. Those unable to secure tickets resorted to the last refuge of the ticketless, craigslist. Perhaps......

Everyone's favorite mega-coffee-selling corporate behemoth has started to annoy some independent record sellers as they become more and more of a force in the music retail business. The latest Beck CD was available at many Starbucks a week before it was in stores. (Granted, it was available on the internet months before, but what can you do.) While this is most likely due to baristas not paying attention to the giant 'DO NOT SELL......

We have been spoiled by the decandent amount of sun recently, so we have decided not to go outside until it stops raining. Since we have a cable modem and free time, we would like to point out some free and legal downloads for your listening pleasure. The Bloc Party is a big buzz-y band garnering tons of press, including a blurb in the famed judge of cool, 'Newsweek.' Download a remix of their single......