To this list of historical blowouts, I’d submit this date for inclusion: Monday, February 27, 2017. Monday night, in the belly of the newly renovated Neumos, Cakes da Killa, Mykki Blanco, and a host of local performers threw Seattle an enormous, kaleidoscopically diverse party. It was the kind of thing we need more now than ever.
Sunday night, Hazel English took the stage wearing a delicately checked blue and yellow sweater, acid wash jeans (relaxed fit), and pink vans. Fittingly for the Vera Project, the crowd was mixed in age and seemed subdued to the point of drowsiness. Most of us sat placidly along the walls through the two openers, but stood and drifted towards the middle of the stage as she and her band began playing.
Cliché’s aside, everyone loves a comeback kid. In March of 2016, Kehlani, the R&B wunderkind behind a series of commercially and critically successful EPs posted an Instagram of an IV. In the caption, she alluded to attempting to take her own life and addressed swirling rumors about her relationships and alleged infidelities.
This Fall, I got sushi with Michete and we talked about their music, Kanye West and our shared Spokane upbringings. At the time, they told me off the record that they were working on the lead single from their next album, Cool Tricks 3.
One of the most common (and most entirely dumb-ass) cultural refrains currently at large is the notion that great art emerges in times of social and political turmoil. “Yes, this administration will be awful,” the faceless hordes opine, “but the art will be great!”
In reports that shocked exactly three people, it was revealed by Teen Vogue and Afropunk that Philip Anschutz, the CEO of AEG, which owns and operates many of the major venues and music festivals in the U.S. donated more than $190,000 to anti-queer groups over the course of four years. They also revealed that Anschutz and his wife have, over their careers, donated vast sums to conservative Republican candidates and super PACs.
Though often denied that kind of critical worship lavished on other politically-minded singer-songwriters, Tracy Chapman the woman and Tracy Chapman the album are more revolutionary than they’ve ever been.
“Most of my songs are about bugs, but this one is about a lizard,” announced local artist Guayaba (FKA Aeon Fux) earlier this year to an audience at the Crocodile. While she probably intended this comment to be jokingly self-deprecating, it was also a fair summary of her set.
I don’t know what to say. Last night I sat in a bar with a group of friends–bright, articulate, kind young people–and watched as our nation decided that fear, economic anxiety, and racism were more valuable than common decency. I sat, tingling in my own skin, and my...
Certainly few other bands can claim the title of “pioneers” like Pansy Division. Often lumped in with the nebulous “queer-core” movement of the early nineties, Pansy Division were nevertheless one of the first openly queer bands ever formed.
Making yourself heard above the din of a writhing sonic underground isn’t an easy feat. But one artist, queer, pop-rap queen Michete, has done just that, all in a crop-top and a sleek fourteen inches of hair.
Drag, French cabaret songs, and pizza are not ideas that usually appear in close proximity to one another, yet somehow, on a Wednesday night, I found myself sitting in Dino’s with Seattle’s premiere drag chanteuse. The world is funny like that.