Seattle’s all-ages concert guide You don’t need fake ID to have fun.

John Roderick, the man behind The Long Winters, is consistent. He has written a handful of songs for all three of The Long Winters full-length albums that sound pretty good. They’re not the kind of songs that people will ever feel all that attached to, and it seems almost inconceivable for anyone to claim The Long Winters as their favorite band.

“Putting the Days to Bed,” is more of the same from Roderick. While it’s destined to be appreciated by Long Winters fans as much as any of their work, it won’t make a splash much of anywhere else. KEXP has been playing songs from Putting… for the last month or so: they don’t make much noise.

I don’t mean to imply that The Long Winters aren’t a good band, or that they’re songs aren’t catchy and pleasant. They just aren’t anything...

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We’re young.

Most Mercurial Sound readers are either in high school or early college. I’m 21, which means I was eleven when the first of these reissues was released in 1996. I didn’t hear about it for some reason. I still hadn’t heard these albums until I got them now, even though I hear every single new song Spoon releases. It’s like Spoon and I friends but we haven’t talked about our pasts until now. Lo and behold Spoon was doing quite a bit more in 1996 than I was (at no point does Spoon lead-singer Britt Daniel say anything about the movie “Men in Black,” or the accompanying Will Smith hit song of the same name, which means that Britt’s interests were apparently different than mine).

The albums, especially full-length “Telephono,” are like a recorded yearbook. Many TV child-actors...

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This all day show in face melting weather started a few hours too early for me. I didn’t show up until 7 and missed the first two bands, Sakred and Under the Given. The latter may have undergone a name change, to Tredd, but I am not certain about that. From what I overhead I missed a couple of adequate metal sets. I did catch the final metal band of the day and three others of varied genres. Before reviewing their sets though, I’d like to mention that this was a memorial show for Brian Morrison, a local musician who used to play in the band Here for Now. He passed away May 22nd and this show in his honor was thrown to raise money to mix and release Brian’s unreleased recordings. Over $700 was raised at a show with more hugs, tears, and sing alongs than I’ve seen since I went to a memorial rave the night after the Capitol Hill shootings.

Lore played metal with an impressive variety of other influences that shone...

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Dear Justine,
How are you? I’m doing well. I’ve been keeping up on your current events in Sweden by reading Mosesthegirl.com. I’m sure you have no idea what is going on here in Seattle so I figured I would offer you a little update.

It’s really, really hot here. It’s so hot I started sweating right when I walked outside yesterday. It’s so hot I have burns on my palms from trying to touch the steering wheel in my car. It’s so hot even Satan was seen yesterday taking his shirt off yesterday. It was not the kind of day one would want to be crammed into a venue with a hundred other sweaty people. I trekked on, though, traveling by my self to Capital Hill and hoping my name was on the guest-list at Neumos because I didn’t have any cash. Speaking of Neumos: their set-up has changed quite a bit: It’s...

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Silent Envy was about halfway through their set at 7, the posted starting time of the show, but I soon realized that this was to be a quick show. It lasted three hours total, as four bands were set up, plowed through maybe half an albums worth of songs each, and got out of the way. San Jose’s Silent Envy opened this last date of the Summer Smashup Tour, a homecoming for both Seattle’s On the Last Day and Kirkland’s From Aphony. What I remember most about the less than standout opener is that Silent Envy has a rhythm section that creates danceable backbeats and rhythms while still complementing the other, possibly more serious aspects of the music and lyrics as well.

A Chance Without, who I’ve seen once before but didn’t remember doing so until about halfway through their set, remind me of a mixture of Taking Back Sunday and Coheed and Cambria, while sounding...

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Justine says: I was going to post in the monthly announcement soon that we have a new writer, Aaron - but he’s just too ambitious. I sent him the login info not 12 hours ago and he’s already posted. Everyone welcome Aaron, our newest staff member!

There are very few albums in the last forty years, since albums became a cohesive art, that have no precedent, some of the most obvious examples being the first Suicide record, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Television’s Marquee Moon, and Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. Very few bands today can claim the feat of creating a new sound, and not trying to cop something from the past, but Le Volume Courbe’s I Killed My Best Friend certainly fits that bill.

Charlotte Marionneau, formerly a contributor to Piano Magic, born in France,...

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If you’re like me, which you probably are, you gave notice to The Killers for about fourteen minutes. Those minutes gave you just long enough to listen to “Somebody Told Me,” once, “Mr. Brightside,” twice, read a quick article about Vegas, AND still consider who in the hell Eric Roberts thinks he is. They were a fun fourteen minutes, weren’t they? Similar amounts of time include: the time it took you to realize that The Lashes suck, the amount of time needed to listen to every good Rapture song, and the time taken to both start and stop liking MIA.

But now, with one song: things have changed. Despite how mainstream they may be The Killers have immediately become interesting. Recently they released new single: “When You Were Young,” (if you haven’t heard it - Go...

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On day two of I’m-not-going-to-Warped-Tour-and-you-can’t-make-me Clear Channel Free Weekend (I’m working on shortening the title) a buddy and I went to White Center to catch the latest edition of the free Punk Rock Showcase. I’m not sure how long Pacific Rim Brewery has been having these local outdoor showcases, but I’ve been hearing about the place at clubs in Seattle and I’ve seen a few flyers around as well. Pacific Rim is a brewery, keg sales location, and bar, but the nice folks allow underagers to attend shows there in return for submitting ourselves to Xing up both hands, including the all underage opening band.

The Plankton Beat, a band I’ve seen a handful of times played to a mostly sitting group of drinkers on a covered stage. My friend and I felt silly sitting and joined the few other younger people near the stage. A few girls, later it became clear that they are friends...

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The Wages of Sin, the reason that I chose to attend this show on the recommendation of a friend, stole the show. The band’s combo of violin, banjo, upright bass, drums, mandolin, and alternating electric/acoustic guitar by the vocalist as well as back up chants by other band members make The Wages of Sin the ultimate purveyors of rockabilly/punk (psychobilly), modern day pirate shanties, and drinking songs. Plus, the band doesn’t sound like a Pogues rip off. Biblical reference intact, “From the Belly of a Whale” was a standout song during this set, which was viewed by a barrel of diehard fans mixed with a gaggle of newcomers.

There was a bit of guitar feedback to overcome and the violinists’ mic stopped working before the set was even half over, forcing him to play louder and share a mic with the banjo player. As the violinist mangled his bow moreso with each song, the band’s camaraderie and fervor spread...

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Last year at Bumbershoot, we (Me, Hanad and Alec) managed to catch Death Cab for Cutie in a surprise benefit for a small organization we knew nothing about. Turns out that organization was 826 Seattle, a writing workshop for people <18, loved not only by the members of Death Cab, but by a lot of people. We just got a press release from the people at Sub Pop (the record label that your indie band would kill to get signed to), who apparently love 826 too.

Anyways, July 22nd there is a benefit from 12-5 at the Phinney Neighborhood Center (6532 Phinney Ave N), including local bands Lillydale, Coconut Coolouts, The Trashies, and the Bad Things. There will also be some other stuff with cake and comedy and kids.

Alot of the stuff at 826 is geared to young kids, but if you’re in high school, they have alot of programs there you might be interested...

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