Last Friday, before X-Ray Press took the stage at Chop Suey, we ran into an acquaintance who described them as "math rock, circa 1994." After their set, another friend described them as "intellectual" musicians. Both are fair assessments: we wouldn't credit it as "original," but "skillful"? Hell yeah. Jumping between jerky time signatures, with a jagged, frequently dissonant guitar opposite thundering bass-lines and fuzzy keyboard melodies, X-Ray Press got down old-skool Don Cab-style. And then......

It's hard to believe, but the Dandy Warhols' sixth studio full-length (and the first on their own label) Earth To The Dandy Warhols will be out this August. The tongue-in-cheek Portland alt-rock band plays the Showbox SoDo tonight. Not sure if it would be a better or worse show if longtime frenemies Brian Jonestown Massacre crashed the gig. As far as we can tell, there's still tix available to tonight's Kultur Shock show at Chop......

Around the Seattlest newsroom, this contributor's distrust of Real Change News is well known; we've long been dubious of how their editorial side balances activism and reporting. (Since the paper has paid, non-indigent writers, supported by charitable donation and the sale of copies, which is itself more or less an act of charity, we've always wondered why they aren't more consistent and aggressive going after the city for its manifold failures. Could it be they......

We've already mentioned the lovely and talented Jesse Sykes appearing tonight at the Tractor with bandmate Phil Wandscher. Also tonight (and also in Ballard) is San Francisco's Citay at the Sunset. Think Sabbath and Zep meets the light pop touches of Big Star. Here's some footage of them from a previous visit to Seattle: Saturday night, besides Kultur Shock at Chop Suey, there's LA's Spindrift at the Comet, who play peyote-twinged cosmic cowboy jams. As......

When the Crocodile Cafe abruptly closed down a month ago, we turned to a friend of ours looking for the inside scoop. Kultur Shock guitarist Val Kiossovski was bar manager down for quite a while (he's now running his own place in Lower Queen Anne, Solo, one of our favorite hangouts), so we figured if anyone knew, he would. Unfortunately, he was busy with problems of his own: rescheduling his band's show. Kultur Shock......

Last night at the Showbox, we were reminded of something Gino Srdjan Yevdjevic said in an interview with us last year: we don't remember the quote entirely, but it was something to the effect of characterizing "world music" as "shit." Not the music or the musicians, per se, but rather the genre, a peculiarly American way of pigeon-holing and marketing foreign music. Gino understood the process only too well: back in the 1980s, he......

The first time we saw Kultur Shock, they were opening for Gogol Bordello at Neumo's, and we have to admit, we'd never heard of them. It was an all-ages show, so we were drinking our fill in the Bad Juju lounge next door, until the insane sounds of the band dragged us away from our beers. Quickly we came to regret missing the first half of their set. Kultur Shock is self-described "Balkan punk rock......

Maybe Seattle doesn’t have a river to dye green just for the occasion, but there are still scads of St. Patrick’s Day activities here in the Emerald City. We suppose you could go to the Seattle Center for the big celebration there, but most people would rather be out drinking, so for your Irish pub-crawling pleasure (cover charges as noted): In the U District and Wallingford, you’ve got all kinds of options, some of which......