Results tagged “dougmartsch”

CRAWLING ZOMBIES : It's going to be quite a cryptic brain-eating kind of Friday night in Capitol Hill, as the army of zombies plan to take over the neighborhood for the Crypticon Zombie Crawl. The costumes of the gruesome group of undead are sure to turn (or spin) a few heads. The local zombie dwellers plan to gather in front of Metro Clothing Co. dressed to kill for brains as well as tickets to Crypticon's horror convention. Now if you encounter a zombie, head to high altitudes or a bar, we've heard that alcohol preserves rotting flesh. 5:00 p.m., Friday // Meet at Metro Clothing Co., 231 Broadway E // Dress to kill and pay as you go

While their live shows the past few years have oscillated between sublime hit and disappointing miss, there's no denying the impressiveness of Built To Spill's back catalog. Central to their discography is 1997's Perfect From Now On, their major label (Warner Bros.) debut, and an album we listened to *a lot* in college. With its noodly, hypnotic guitar epics, catchy anti-pop melodies, and downright biting lyrics, Perfect From Now On was destined to be a classic, and now the elder statesman of Pacific Northwest indie rock are doin' it live.

We tend to like Scandinavian bands, so it makes sense that we'd be fans of Denmark's Figurines. Christian Hjelm's whiny falsetto vocals remind us of Neil Young and/or Doug Martsch (same diff), while the musical underpinnings run the gamut from bluesy to psychedelic-leaning to the melodic pop of "Let's Head Out" (above) from their third and latest album When the Deer Wore Blue. Tomorrow night they play the Croc, along with catchy-as-hell Australian art-rock five-piece Dappled Cities. Figurines don't stop by Seattle often--once per album tour, it seems--so this is your lone chance to catch these great Danes.

Time, having surrendered to the whims of sound, had fallen away to some dark corner of the hall and in its place was a band on a mission to go out in style. We had no idea how long the final encore had gone on. We knew only that we didn't care. This wasn't some finale we wished would come to an end, so we could finally walk to our car, pausing for a moment to rest our tired legs before driving home, mind swimming, ears buzzing. This wasn't even a song in the traditional sense -- more like a supernatural joyride for the senses. Doug Martsch and and the rest of Built To Spill seemed to each be animated by something hardwired in the pit of their souls. Martsch, in particular, looked to us like a vessel or a channel through which these songs poured. His eyes, in fact, were closed most of the night while his voice, his hands and his fingers took care of business. A friend of Seattlest commented that Martsch's playing was "like butter on a hot dinner roll," and as strange as that comment was, we think we know what he meant.

We'll just come right out and say it: Last night's Built to Spill show was surprisingly lackluster. Perhaps that's what we get for attending the second of a three-night stand: missing out on the intensity of the first night and the what-the-hell-ness of the last. Instead, we got a set that drew mostly from the band's latest album You in Reverse (and not even the good stuff off that album), plus three brand-new unreleased songs, which our companion delineated as follows: "one was pretty good, one was okay, and one was complete crap."