Today’s pick:
1. St. Vincent is playing at Neumos tonight. Her music (and her voice) is remarkably pretty, lulling, français, almost boring, and then, all of a sudden, it’s overwhelmed by a wave of computerized whooshes and dance beats, or it turns into fast-jazz quirkiness. It’s very hip right now.
She is also gorgeous. Her music videos are melodramatic, featuriing slow-walking and death contemplation and uncontrollable weeping. This video for “Marrow” is crazy.
GameNerd Sam Machkovech adds: “Highly recommended, especially when Clark flexes her experimental guitar muscles (which she worked up as a member of Glenn Branca’s 100-Guitar Symphonies long, long ago).” I did not know that. Awesome.
With Fences and Wildbirds & Peacedrums. Tonight at Neumos (925 E Pike Street), 8 pm. Tickets are $13.
This weekend:
1. Joshua Ferris’ first book, Then We Came to the End, was an inquiry into the minds of corporate drones (it was even written in the third person). Ferris, who worked in a Chicago ad agency while writing the book, gives center stage to the universal American paranoia about getting fired, in a work environment where practically nothing else exists. It’s funny the same way “The Office” is funny, of course, but it also has density of plot and character and an emotional depth that goes far beyond the sitcom.
Ferris’ new book The Unnamed is about a high-powered Manhattan lawyer who constantly has the compulsion to walk as far as he can. Ferris is reading from the book tomorrow at the Seattle Public Library’s University Branch.
Tomorrow at 2 pm, at SPL University Branch (5009 Roosevelt Way NE). Free.
2 Experience Music Project is opening its Graham Nash-curated exhibition of rock and roll photography tomorrow night. Graham Nash, if you care—I don’t especially—was in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in the ’70s. But at noon, there’s a discussion on Neil Young by one of his photographers and an archiver of his music, and it’s free. Yeah, Neil Young. That’s more like it.
Also, going to the EMP is actually really fun, and this is a good excuse. Every once in a while, I like to be reminded of how many ridiculous guitars Jimi Hendrix owned.
Tomorrow at noon at the EMP (325 5th Ave N). The Neil Young lecture is free–a Graham Nash interview with other photographers, at 2 pm, is $20.
3. Blood Red Dancers are a great Seattle hipster band. I say hipster, because if anything typifies the 2010 hipster, it’s the appropriation of things that were hip in the ’70s and ’80s and are now embarrassing. Dude: It’s ironic.
On second thought, though, there’s nothing embarrassing about the sound Blood Red Dancers emulate. Sometimes they sound like Glenn Danzig over sparse piano. Sometimes they sound like Jonathan Richman howling over dance beats. They’re the perfect retro rock mixtape.
BRD are opening for D. Black, a rising Seattle hip hopper, at KEXP’s monthly Audioasis benefit. DJ Hannah Levin broadcasts her show from the venue, and all the proceeds go to local nonprofits (tomorrow night’s go to the CD Forum).
With People Eating People. Tomorrow night at 9 pm, at The Sunset (5433 Ballard Ave NW). Tickets are $7/$8.
