Results tagged “neumos”

'CAUSE SARAH VOWELL'S INCREDIBLE: Much-loved favorite author, humorist, journalist, and sometimes Pixar character Sarah Vowell will be in town tonight to read from her latest novel, The Wordy Shipmates. For anyone who has yet to have read Vowell's work, we promise this will be an excellent opportunity to get acquainted not only with her latest, but as well with Vowell herself. To ensure a seat or standing spot we highly recommend getting there early--there's definitely a reason why this book has been on the bestseller's list for practically forever.

Along with our favorite purveyors of Seattle goof rock, BOAT and Aqueduct, we were delighted when one of our or newest favorite pop rock imports--who happen to also have an aquatic name--self-released their third offering just about one month ago. The Seattle by-way-of-Boston trio The Sea Navy have continued to fine-tune their craft of producing tunes that should delight fans of the Cold War Kids, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and catchy pop rock

ARE YOU JUST? Michael J. Sandel, professor of philosophy at Harvard, talks about political and moral philosophy at Town Hall. Sandel’s all-encompassingly titled “Justice” courses are among the most highly attended in the university’s history. Sandel is the author of Just: What’s the Right Thing to Do, which examines our obligations to others.

RESTAURANT CRITIC STRUGGLES WITH EATING DISORDER: A couple of weeks ago, former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni was in town to promote his book documenting his battle with bulimia. This evening another former restaurant critic recounts her fight with the illness, but it's her daughter who struggled with anorexia. Sheila Himmel will be at the Elliott Bay Book Company to read from Hungry: A Mother and Daughter Fight Anorexia and discuss her personal experience with the intersection of foodie culture and eating disorders.

To those of you who only identify the soundtrack of Scotland as bagpipe tunes and/or the sunny pop of Belle & Sebastian, we implore you to spend some time with tonight’s Neumos lineup.

NUCLEAR WASTELANDS: And they're in Washington! Tonight is your last chance to see lauded local doc Arid Lands, winner of the Best Film award at the 2008 Local Sightings Festival. The film explores the economic, environmental, and social impacts of, well, Hanford, the superfund site to end all superfund sites, replete with leaking nuclear waste containers, buried train cars full of radioactive animal poo, and countless other horrors of the nuclear era.

WALKING ON THE MOON: The Northwest Film Forum keeps on 69ing with their screenings this week of Downhill Racer and Camille 2000. As a lovely coincidence, 1969 was also the year that Neil Armstrong did his giant leap for mankind. As such, the NWFF is well within their purview to show footage of the moon landing tonight as part of their 69 film series. A screening of the original television broadcast starts at 7 p.m., followed by a montage of major NASA events leading up to and including the landing, stitched together love by local filmmaker and sound artist Joe Milutis. 7 p.m. // Northwest Film Forum // 1515 12th Ave. // $9

"Drink for the Kids" is the annual benefit for the all-ages Vera Project, the music and arts center for kids who can't drink, and we for one can't wait for an end to this scourge too soon. Imagine not being able to drink! How thirsty would you be?! We're not up on all the science, but we're happy to support the race for the cure, and that means we're off to Neumos tonight to hear fleet, foxy Robin Pecknold, Throw Me The Statue, and Grand Hallway. Tickets are $15 in advance, doors at 8 p.m.

SHORT FILMS: Tonight, the awards for this year's 48-Hour Film Project are being given out at the Harvard Exit, after a screening of top films. The festival this year included over 50 teams, who were given three elements to include in a film to be made in two days. The full screenings of all submissions took place back on June 23-25, but you can catch the creme de la creme tonight. 9 p.m. // Harvard Exit Theater // 807 E. Roy St. // $10

IT'S FOR THE CHILDREN: Today's the second day of A Drink for the Kids, the 7th annual Vera Project travelling fundraiser running through Saturday's show at Neumo's with Robin Pecknold and Throw Me the Statue. Show your support for the all-ages club by ordering a Stone IPA or the designated A Drink for the Kids cocktail at one of several bars around town. Tonight the venue is Ballard's Hazlewood, a bar we love so much that we wish we could just scoop it on up and move it to the Hill. 6-10 p.m. // Hazlewood // 2311 NW Market St // as much as you drink

"I think the Decemberists are a great band, and I think there are some similarities: we are both folkish and use more varied instrumentation than most rock bands. I think that if you actually sit and listen to both bands, you'd see that they both are coming from very different places. The era of songs that drive and influence the majority of the Builders' material is early Depression-era blues, folk, and gospel, and weirder stuff like Tom Waits."

FIVE YEARS OLD: Yup, that's Neumos, turning the big five tonight with a party. Helio Sequence, Grand Hallway, and Palmer Electric Co. take the stage tonight. Entry is free when you buy a drink at Moe Bar, which also means it's 21 and over. 8 p.m. // Neumo's // 925 E. Pike St. // free!, 21+

• First we thought it was just Capitol Hill's little old men that were accident-prone. Now we hear about another elderly 81-year-old man who is suffering life-threatening injuries after being hit by a delivery truck this morning in the International District.
• Yesterday, U.S. Soccer announced Seattle's Qwest Field and Husky Stadium as the venues under consideration as part of their bid to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022.

It took five songs for Eddie Argos & co. to beat the Seattle chill. As they began their set around midnight Saturday, the audience was depressingly reminiscent of the last time we saw Art Brut play, when Argos (possibly probably drunk) began expressing his disgust with the audience's lack of enthusiasm. Aside from a small core of 15 to 20 enthusiastic under-21s (God bless 'em) crowded in front of the stage, the rest of the audience was painfully staid--indie rock kids who couldn't deign to do more than slightly bop their heads, scenesters trying to carry on conversations during the show.

Two reasons: Kultur Shock on Friday (with X-Ray Press and Orange Tulip Conspiracy, $10, 21+), Art Brut on Saturday (with Miike Snow and Black Nite Crash, $13, all ages). Local gypsy art punks Kultur Shock are releasing their fourth studio album this year, and are about to jet off on tour in Russia. They don't play Seattle all that often anymore, and they're an insanely wild live band, mixing Sabbath-style guitar riffs with Balkan trad, shredded violin solos competing with lead-singer Gino Yevdjevic's melismatic vocals. As for Art Brut, they were indie rock darlings a couple years ago after an amazing debut record, , recorded in beautiful Salem, Ore. and produced by the legendary Frank Black. Also, like Kultur Shock, Art Brut is a fantastic live band that gives it their all and is best seen in a club.

IN FULL GIAMATTIVISION: Cold Souls is the too-grimly titled existential comedy starring Paul Giamatti as Paul Giamatti. While rehearsing Uncle Vanya, Giamatti begins to lose himself in his character's depression, and looking for a temporary fix, stumbles across the new process of "soul extraction," as detailed in the New Yorker. While the movie is deadpan, Giamatti is not. His off-kilter spiral into soullessness is by turns hilarious and touching.

FIRE GOOD: In his new book Catching Fire, Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that it's the human need to cook our food that made us so smart and strong and socially organized. Take that, raw foods movement! Additionally, we have cooking to credit/blame for the male/female division of labor, so thank your great-great-great-to the nth degree-grandmothers for subjecting women to unequal pay for equal work. Anyone with any problems with the theories above can yell at Wrangham at his reading at Town Hall tonight. 7:30 p.m. // Town Hall // 1119 8th Ave. // $5

With dear, sweet Jens Lekman in town for a two-night stand at the Croc, you'd think it'd be easy to find a way to see him one of those dates. But no! Jens has some serious live music competition. Thursday night at the Showbox, there's an all-ages show with Metric, starring the lovely and talented Emily Haines. It's sold out, but as always, where there's a will, there's a Craigslist posting. And then Friday night you've got the tough call of Jens or Handsome Furs at Neumo's, the husband-wife duo featuring Dan "Jimmy Legs" Boeckner from Wolf Parade. Bad timing for Jens, but good timing for the rest of Seattle.

Lookit, today is a downright glorious day--way too glorious for the beginning of a workweek. We could encourage you to attend all kinds of events, including scads of SIFF films and at least two shows (the dirty electro of Peaches at the Showbox or ex-members of the Unicorns and Arcade Fire making up Clues at Neumo's). But we won't.

Has it been a week already? SIFF is in full effect, so it's time to take another look at upcoming films. If you're looking for even more opinions on the films that are showing during the fest, check out the Northwest Film Forum's picks, or the picks of some SIFF programmers themselves. For all film screenings, the general/member ticket prices are $11/$9 (and matinees $8/$7), except for gala screenings and other special events, which of course cost more.

FREE DATE NIGHT: Shop sex toys with your beloved. We're going to quote here: "Enjoy mini-workshops on fellatio, the G-spot, and sex positions." The first twenty-five couples in the door get a goodie bag, so if you are both cheap and horny, this is the place for tonight. 7 p.m. // Babeland // 707 E Pike St // free

In case you're still on the fence about tonight's electronic extravaganza, Moderat (Modeselektor + Apparat) at Neumos, you can get a preview of the show today at 2 p.m. on KEXP, where the trio will be performing live and doing an interview. The video above is the trailer for their newly released DVD, and is a preview of the kinds of visuals you can expect tonight from Pfadfinderei.

Local faves The Purrs headline a Monday night line-up at Neumo's, with a trio of other bands. The Purrs plan to release their third LP later this year, including "Waiting for the Asteroid," "The Outpost," a super-chill sci-fi epic that's totally out-of-character thematically for the band, and has hints of Bowie all over it.

MIDDLE EASTERN EXPOSURE: All the way from Kabul, ladies and gentlemen, Tamim Ansary! He's in town to talk about his book Destiny Disrupted, which is like his World According to the...well, Islamic World. Spanning the time from Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and more, he tells a counter-narrative of cultural progress in which the rise of the West kinda, you know, sucks. The San Francisco Chronicle calls the book “an indispensable guide," while the Oregonian says it is "vivid, often wrenching."

Every Seattle musician or music appreciator respects the work of Jeremy Enigk. The erstwhile lead singer of seminal (and possibly reuniting?) emo band Sunny Day Real Estate and The Fire Theft, Jeremy has since released four solo albums (five, if you count The End Sessions, which we don't). Thursday's the CD release show at Neumo's for his latest album OK Bear, which just came out two days ago. All the press materials on the new album mention that it's "less orchestral" than previous efforts, which makes it extra-ironical that he's playing with the Seattle Rock Orchestra, a full-fledged thirteen-piece orchestra (hence the name, duh), with instrumentation like that found on his first solo album, everyone's precious Return of the Frog Queen. So this is your chance to hear those songs live in their original lush form, as well as the new stuff getting the same grandiose treatment. For a taste, check out the Monday afternoon KEXP session Thursday morning at 8 a.m. (and if it's after 8, hit up the archive).

CHANNELING NIRVANA, ONLY BETTER: Yeah, we said it, but as Kurt Cobain once noted about the Vaselines, "They are my most favorite songwriters in the whole world." So much so, that he named his daughter Frances Bean after lead singer Frances McKee. We agree and think it's totally awesome that they're in town playing on a Tuesday for only $20. A hugely famous band that doesn't come to town very often, fairly affordable, plenty of tickets left, and on a Tuesday. We are practically pinching ourselves, and can't wait to hear old favorites such as "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" and "You Think You're a Man," among others. The last time Seattle got a chance to see them was at Sub Pop Records' 20th Anniversary, and we are loving that this time around it will be in the city, with hopefully a smaller crowd.

LIPS LIKE SUGAR: It's been a long time since we saw it at Sundance last year, but Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's follow-up to Half Nelson is finally in theaters. Sugar follows a young Dominican baseball player as he tries to make it through the farm teams and into the major leagues. Sez us: "This ain't no rag-to-riches sports story, nor is Sugar in the vein of Behind the Music, chronicling a meteoric rise and fall; instead, it's a much more complex and realistic portrayal of the professional athletic system. Once again, Boden and Fleck prove their high level of screenwriting skill and directorial talent. They know how to write a nuanced script and they know where to put the camera." Sugar continues its run at the Harvard Exit through Thursday.

FUZZY: Everyone's favorite NYC-based noise-pop band, the Vivian Girls, are back at Neumo's tonight. Last year, their self-titled debut made it on nearly everyone's best-of list, despite the fact the band lacks the harmonic sensibilities of, say, tour mates like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart (not with them tonight). In fact, for all the talk about a resurgence of "noise pop" with cascades of fuzz and distortion, the Vivian Girls remind us of no one more than the notorious, idiot-savant kiddie band the Shaggs.

DREAM COMES TRUE: Mariner pitcher Chris Jakubauskas makes his first major league start today--at the advanced (for baseball) age of 30. Jakubauskas, a hitter in college, was a cement worker and Nordstrom employee before finally breaking into independent league baseball in 2004 with the Lincoln, Nebraska SaltDogs. The M's signed him to their minor league system two years ago, he made the most of a longshot chance to make the major league roster this spring, and now gets an emergency start tonight due to injury. The Mariners will be going for their seventh consecutive win.